As a sysadmin who wishes he'd discovered this book earlier, I have no problem with recommending "The Practice of System and Network Administration" as a <i>great</i> resource: <a href="http://everythingsysadmin.com/aboutbook.html" rel="nofollow">http://everythingsysadmin.com/aboutbook.html</a><p>It's definitely an OS-agnostic book, so if you're looking for "how do we do task/process/design A with OS B?", it's not the right fit.  It'd still be worth it if you're expecting to have to do anything except the very shortest-term systems administration.