Best/Great Operating Systems book?
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Many schools use the "Dinosaur Book", Operating System Concepts, by Silberschatz, Galvin, and Gagne.
I just got out of the first day of my OS class and looked up the required textbook at amazon and it has like 12 1-star and 2 2-stars.... So im thinkin about getting a few outside resources. Any recommendations? Were using linux apparently
I liked Tannenbaum's Modern Operating Systems when we used it in school. His writing style was conversational enough to keep me interested.
It is really good for a broad overview of general concepts, but do not expect very detailed/technical descriptions of these concepts though. This is in no way a criticism of Tanenbaum, but more an observation that each chapter in the book could easily be expanded to a book (or several) on it's own. "Operating Systems Design and Implementation" is more detailed since it explains the inner workings of Minix. There is however some (even textual) overlap in these books.
I must add that I have old(er) versions of both these book, mostly because i find the pricing quite prohibitive, so please my word with a grain of salt.
I completely agree. Modern Operating Systems talks about different approaches to building OSes. Instead of just giving the Minix point of view or the Linux way, it gives several different solutions to common problems.
For some reason, I find Tanenbaum's texts rather verbose. He talks too much.
This is the worst book ever written. DO NOT GET THIS BOOK!!! The explanations are poor at best. Many of the examples are confusing. It's just a horrible book all around.
My brother is taking Operating Systems, his textbook is "Operating System Concepts (7th Edition)". For your convenience it has been made available for free by magical ponies on thepiratebay.org.
Dinosaur book is a primary source. And read Operating Systems: Design and Implementation, 2nd ed. by Andy Tanenbaum and do some work in minix to get a real feeling. Then you can start to read Linux Kernel Internals and the design and implementation of FreeBSD and look at the real linux kernel and FreeBSD source. The real devil is always in details.
another vote for the Dinosaur Book. I used it in a very good Master's OS class at BU.