Operating System Concepts

I was careful to buy the US edition instead of the International edition. Despite the claims that the content is exactly the same, that is simply not true. The exercises after every chapter are different. One of my classmates unknowingly got the Int'l edition and was not so lucky. Entire sections of chapters were printed non-sequentially. In other words, the book had pgs 1-15, then 32-45, then 16-31. I've come to realize that the Int'l editions are the equivalent of Chinese knockoffs electronics for books. To use an old cliche: You get what you pay for.The book itself does a good job of explaining each concept, although my professor's lectures clarified all of the confusing concepts. The writing is as interesting as can be for a topic I consider very dry. This edition is a bit outdated, using Windows XP as examples for many of the concepts. There is a more recent edition using Windows 7 called Operating Systems Concepts Essentials. Overall, if you are looking for a textbook introducing the design and inner functions of operating systems, I don't know of any better sources.

This book was the required reading for one of my college programming courses. The authors go in to good details about the specifics of all subjects relating to operating systems in general. Some that were notable were the use and creation of semaphore objects, threading, CPU scheduling, and disk scheduling algorithms. The semaphores and threading were particularly useful in completing the classic synchronization problem 'The Dining Philosophers' which was one of the assignments for the course. The breakdown of disk organization was another very beneficial and highly interesting topic. The book covers MAC OS, Linux, Unix, Windows, as well as some information about older systems such as DOS and CP/M. The book has generalized examples and each topic includes a good deal of theory. I do not recommend this book for people without a solid foundation of C or C++. It helps to know Assembly as well, but not necessary.

I used this book in my OS class of my Master in Compute Science. I remember back in college, I took OS with an older version of this book. Now with professional experience, my perspective about this subject changed drastically.If you really want to take advantage of how an OS works such as the techniques of managing resources, and to apply this knowledge to your own programs; please read this book. The book is excellent if you like advanced topics such as multi-threading and multi-processing. Also, it will help you to understand how the OS interacts with the user programs and how you take advantage of advanced approaches like thread kernel model, etc.

The book was exhausting to read and quite frankly would be a mystery without other sources to help understand the material. Though it covers a full spectrum of concepts and various examples of OSes, the authors tend to use technical terms without explanation as to their meaning. In short they haven't carefully considered their audience. Highly recommend Understanding the Linux Kernel as an easier read and covers many of the same topics, even touching on non-Linux approaches.

One of the authors tipped me that this would be a good book, so I may be biased, but I felt that the level of technical detail is not too much to handle if you've had a computer architecture course as well as a couple classes in programming.If you skim the book and sequentially dig in deeper and deeper at your own happy pace, it isn't too difficult to get the various (and many) terms.However, I'm not sure if this book is simple enough to keep pace with a detailed course on the subject unless you're already familiar with the subject matter (I'm still early in my own course).

Bought this for an operating systems course as required reading.Was pleasantly surprised at the presentation of some difficult concepts and the neat explanations with simple analogies.Pretty good for a lot of topics, has important keywords highlighted and gives information about specific operating systems at the end of chapters(not too much though)I highly recommended reading for somebody interested in getting the concepts and then building from there.

I'm thinking most people who buy this book are aiming for a career in the technical world (computer science, etc.) But I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who is interested in the inner workings of operating systems. I bought this book for an OS class. I haven't read the whole thing yet but I've read a lot of different pieces of it, and it's great for diving in to and learning how things work. It provides detailed explanations that make sense.

True to its name, this textbook focuses on the concepts and is at times very abstract, though it frequently discusses how different real OSs (Windows, Mac OSX, Solaris) tackle different OS design problems.I thought the material was at the perfect level of detail for me, an application programmer. One of the most readable textbooks I've had in my four years as a computer science undergrad. Easy to understand and end-of-chapter summaries were a welcome addition.