Operating System Concepts

I remember this being one of my most-loved books in university ... operating systems was one of my favourite courses and this textbook kept me incredibly fascinating. It was also, at least for me, overwhelmingly dense since in university I was being piled under new concepts that didn't sink in due to lack of practical application and general vocational immaturity.

Reading it again ... it's a good book. It's possibly a good reference, given that my particular copy is ancient. But I have to wonder if there's anything in this book that can't be reconstructed from wikipedia and other resources out there. There are also many great legitimately free operating systems books, like Operating Systems: Three Easy Pieces, that it's hard for me to show more justify it except as a well-curated and well-written, if not pedagogically unique, guide.

CLRS is a book I'll keep forever because it and maybe "The Algorithms Design Manual" have not been replaced by any other resource. It's hard for me to say the same thing here. show less

I’ve lost count of how many operating systems books I’ve read. It’s probably less than 5, and it’s definitely greater than or equal to 3. Nevertheless, I’ve enjoyed reading them, for the most part.

Operating System Concepts by Abraham Silberschatz, among others, finds itself in its seventh edition. It is a massive tome, covering the major aspects of operating systems, including in-depth examples of the major OSes of the time: Linux, XP, and some others, detailing their strengths, their weaknesses, and how they handle the complex things geeks keep trying to get them to do speedily.

I must admit, I doubt I’ll ever implement an operating system (other than the one I did in a college course, which was essentially a subset of show more Linux), but I still find it interesting to see the state of the art, and you might too, if that sort of thing is up your alley.

I’d imagine, as well, if you are the type of person who has the yen for operating systems, that this book, and the other few I’ve read, might be indispensable resources for your technical library, or likewise if that book you’re using for your Operating Systems 101 course isn’t cutting it.

What with a new version of Windows and a significant improvement to the Linux kernel, as well as the ubiquity of portable OSes, I’m curious what the eighth edition will have, and how many more thousands of pages it’ll be. show less

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Preface
Contents
1. Introduction
2. Computer-System Structures
3. Operating-System Structures
4. Processes
5. CPU Scheduling
6. Process Synchronization
7. Deadlocks
8. Memory Management
9. Virtual Memory
10. File-System Interface
11. File-System Implementation
12. I/O Systems
13. Secondary-Storage Structure
14. Tertiary-Storage Structure
15. Network Structures
16. Distributed System Structures
17. Distributed File Systems
18. Distributed Coordination
19. Protection
20. Security
21. The Unix System
22. The Linux System
23. Windows NT
24. Historical Perspective
Bibliography
Credits
Index