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Title: Operating System Concepts, 6th Edition by Avi Silberschatz, Peter Baer Galvin, Greg Gagne, A Silberschatz ISBN: 0471417432 Publisher: John Wiley & Sons Pub. Date: 26 June, 2001 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $106.50 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.76
Rating: 5
Summary: Compelling read
Comment: I think this book is one of the most helpful I've read for developing my software engineering skills. I originally had the 5th edition as an undergraduate. We didn't have to read the whole book, and, quite frankly, at the time, I wouldn't have probably read it even if we did. But, once I started working, I started reading the book (for personal edification?), and was about halfway through when I saw that the sixth edition was out. I ordered it, gave away my fifth edition, and started over at the beginning so that I wouldn't miss any of the updates. I think that when it comes to learning threading it's an excellent reference. But beyond that, there are a lot of operating system concepts (virtual memory, security, clustering, and I could go on) that have plenty of applications in non-OS development projects. It's true that this book doesn't provide code examples, but the concepts are well described and it would be difficult to provide meaningful, concise code to illustrate most of the concepts. I think a good developer can take these concepts and use them to solve a variety of problems. I very much recommend this book, it's clearly written and very informative.
Rating: 3
Summary: If you can't find anything better
Comment: If you have no experience with operating systems concepts this book can either be a decent friend or a nightmare, depending on which chapters you read.
On top of vagueness and ambiguity, the illustrations are poorly placed, sometimes pages after the accompanying text. Many chapters are confusing to the point of frustration, especially those concerning synchronization and paging. Some algorithms are oversimplified, while others are given in so much detail the basic concept is lost.
The book does however have its good points, hence my rating of 3. It's not so horrible that you can't learn from it. Some chapters are represented quite well. At the end of each chapter, the basis of that chapter's implementation in modern operating systems is given (Windows NT, Unix, Solaris etc.).
All in all, the book is faithful to its title but not worth the price. A good second choice if the book you want is out of stock.
Rating: 4
Summary: Excellent Attempt at Presenting Difficult Subject
Comment: This popular book was written as an introductory course to operating systems but systematically provides an extensive description of operating system concepts. The 1st half of the book is typically used for undergraduate computer science classes although the book as a whole is often required for graduate level classes.
It is assumed that readers will have some knowledge of high-level languages and general computer organization. The book does not spotlight any one particular operating system but rather presents concepts and algorithms that are common to many of the Oss that are commonly used today, including MS-DOS, Windows 2000 & NT, Linux, Sun Microsystems' Solaris 2, IBM OS/2, Apple Macintosh, and DEC VMS.
The book has 7 major parts:
1) Overview: What Operating Systems are, what they do, how they are designed, and where they came from. General history and explanations. Some discussion on hardware.
2) Process Management: How information is processed. Methods for process scheduling, interprocess communication, process synchronization, deadlock handling, and threads.
3) Storage Management: How main memory functions and executes. The mechanisms for storage of and access to data is covered. The classic internal algorithms and structures of storage management is discussed and the advantages and disadvantages of each.
4) I/0 Systems: The types of devices that attach to a computer. How the devices are accessed and controlled. Performance issues and examined thoroughly.
5) Distributed systems: The collection of processors that do not share a clock or memory. How distributed file systems are shared, synchronized, communicate, and deal with deadlocks.
6) Protection and Security: How mechanisms ensure that only certain processes that have obtained proper authorization can use certain files, memory segments, CPU, etc.
7) Case Studies: This is where individual real operating systems are discussed in depth. These systems are Linux, Windows 2000, FreeBSD, Mach, and Nachos.
Of course this is a very general list and omits many other aspects of Operating Systems that are included in the book. This 887 page book does not include formal proofs but it does contain (though it would be better to have more) figures, diagrams, examples, and notes to help explain concepts.
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Title: Introduction to Algorithms, Second Edition by Thomas H. Cormen, Charles E. Leiserson, Ronald L. Rivest, Clifford Stein ISBN: 0262032937 Publisher: MIT Press Pub. Date: 01 September, 2001 List Price(USD): $79.95 |
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Title: Computer Organization and Design: The Hardware/Software Interface by David A. Patterson, John L. Hennessy, Nitin Indurkhya ISBN: 1558604286 Publisher: Morgan Kaufmann Pub. Date: August, 1997 List Price(USD): $84.95 |
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Title: Concepts of Programming Languages (5th Edition) by Robert W. Sebesta ISBN: 0201752956 Publisher: Pearson Addison Wesley Pub. Date: 31 July, 2001 List Price(USD): $104.00 |
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Title: UNIX System Programming (2nd Edition) by Keith Haviland, Marcus Gray, Ben Salama ISBN: 0201877589 Publisher: Addison-Wesley Pub Co Pub. Date: 09 December, 1998 List Price(USD): $64.00 |
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Title: Computer Networking: A Top-Down Approach Featuring the Internet by James F. Kurose, Keith W. Ross, James Kurose, Keith Ross ISBN: 0201976994 Publisher: Pearson Addison Wesley Pub. Date: 17 July, 2002 List Price(USD): $97.00 |
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