Introduction to Unix and Linux

Operating System Theory

Understanding Operating Systems, Fourth Edition

Format: Hardcover
Author: Ida M. Flynn
ReleaseDate: 08 March, 2005
Publisher: Course Technology
Rating:

Nice Introduction to Operating Systems
The first part deals with the basics of operating systems which includes memory manager, processor manager, file manager, device manager and network manager. The book is divided into two parts. This part is presented in such a way that it can be easily comprehended by even novices and the authors did an excellent job here. The second part of the book deals with specific operating systems. Details about MS-DOS, Windows 2000, UNIX, OpenVMS Alpha and OS/390 operating systems are provided in this part. While there are few locations where the explanation is not very clear, for the most part it is understandable.

This book was a required text for an undergrad course in Operating Systems I was taking. I read it from cover to cover and overall I liked it very much. I would have liked to see more visuals, examples and exercises. I will not sell this book but I will keep it for future reference. Like another reviewer mentioned, some knowledge about computer peripherals is necessary to study this book, however no specific language is assumed. Highly recommended to those who are new to this topic.

Great Intro to a complicated subject
When I was studying OS in college, I didn't need to create operating systems, I needed to know what they're all about. This book really hits the important info about a complicated subject. This was the required book in my OS class and I could read and understand even the complicated stuff. It's a good starting place. This is one of only 2 textbooks that I didn't sell when I graduated. It's still a good reference. I highly recommend it.

Anemic, Obsolete, and Contains factual errors
While there is historical and pedagogical justification for covering MS-DOS, the cover text claims that MS-DOS is one of "the three most widely-used operating systems". When I received this book in the mail, I was curious as to why it was including a large section on MS-DOS. This statement is a bit dated. While MS-DOS may have formed the basis for early versions of MS-Windows, current versions are NT based. The book's discussion of the relationship between MS-DOS, Windows, and Windows-NT is a bit muddled.

Turning to the actual section on MS-DOS, we read that MS-DOS was the "successor to CP/M" which is correct. However, the authors go on to flatly claim that "CP/M ran "8-bit machines marketed by Apple Computer and Tandy Corporation". This claim is hard to understand. CP/M was an operating system which ran on Intel 8080 and Zilog Z80 processors. The Apple II computer incorporated a Mostech 1802 processor which executed a superset of the Motorola 6800 instruction set. The two instruction sets families were mutually incompatible. Further, it is well known that Steve Wozniak produced the operating system for the Apple II. Ignorance of instruction set incompatibility is not a good indicator of textbook reliability.

While the book does cover Bell Unix and Linux, it does not appear to cover BSD. BSD is historically significant in both the evolution of the unix operating system and the internet. The index also lacks a reference to the GNU project which is a pivotal component of any delivered Linux system.

While this text does cover some operating system theory and does distribute architectural principles and features such as RAID systems throughout the text, it does little to explain how operating systems actually work. In particular, it does not have much in the way of code samples for key components such as the multitasking kernel.

This text lacks a separate section for architecture review. It begins with a chapter on memory allocation and proceeds to a chapter on process scheduling. While architectural features are distributed throughout the text, the text can not stand alone for programs which expect student to learn systems programming.

Physically, the book is handsomely produced and is of a more student-friendly size than many other textbooks. It is well illustrated with illustrations for such classic concurrency problems as the Dining Philosopher's Problem. This book may be appropriate for a course taught to future IT technicians, but should not be considered as a text for a Computer Science, Software Engineering, or Computer Engineering program.

This review is for the Fourth Edition ISBN 0-534-42366-3.