Modern Operating Systems
£22.78
For software development professionals and computer science students, Modern Operating Systems gives a solid conceptual overview of operating system design, including detailed case studies of Unix/Linux and Windows 2000.Readers familiar with Tanenbaum s previous text, Operating Systems, know the author is a great proponent of simple design and hands-on experimentation. His earlier book came bundled with the source code for an operating system called Minux, a simple variant of Unix and the platform used by Linus Torvalds to develop Linux. Although this book does not come with any source code, he illustrates many of his points with code fragments (C, usually with Unix system calls).The first half of Modern Operating Systems focuses on traditional operating systems concepts: processes, deadlocks, memory management, I/O, and file systems. There is nothing ground-breaking in these early chapters, but all topics are well covered, each including sections on current research and a set of student problems. It is the second half of the book that differentiates itself from older operating systems texts. Here, each chapter describes an element of what constitutes a modern operating system--awareness of multimedia applications, multiple processors, computer networks, and a high level of security. The chapter on multimedia functionality focuses on such features as handling massive files and providing video-on-demand. Included in the discussion on multiprocessor platforms are clustered computers and distributed computing. Finally, the importance of security is discussed--a lively enumeration of the scores of ways operating systems can be vulnerable to attack, from password security to computer viruses and Internet worms.Included at the end of the book are case studies of two popular operating systems: Unix/Linux and Windows 2000. There is a bias toward the Unix/Linux approach, not surprising given the author s experience and academic bent, but this bias does not detract from Tanenbaum s analysis. Both operating systems are dissected, describing how each implements processes, file systems, memory management, and other operating system fundamentals.Tanenbaum s mantra is a simple, accessible operating system design. Given that modern operating systems have extensive features, he is forced to reconcile physical size with simplicity. Towards this end, he makes frequent references to the Frederick Brooks classic The Mythical Man Month for wisdom on managing large, complex software development projects. He finds both Windows 2000 and Unix/Linux guilty of being too complicated--with a particular skewering of Windows 2000 and its mammoth Win32 API. A primary culprit is the attempt to make operating systems more user-friendly, which Tanenbaum views as an excuse for bloated code. The solution is to have smart people, the smallest possible team, and well-defined interactions between various operating systems components. Future operating system design will benefit if the advice in this book is taken to heart. --Pete Ostenson
top class - Should it be forbidden to have morons submit reviews on Amazon ? How can those reviewers write that Tanenbaum s explanations are stupid ? Anyway, Tanenbaum has written a series of perfect books on computers, from structured organisations to operating systems to networks etc ... No one can explain better. Must have book if interested in the topic and need to learn a lot from scratch.
money wasted!!!! DO NOT BUY - stupid book. explanations are awful. The questions given are not easy, but they could be if the book was explained properly. he is so brief in everything, then at the end of the chapter decides to give you the most impossible question. and stupidly unless you are a professor you don t have any means of access to the answers, even if you are self learning. i recommend not to buy his flimsy book wouldn t give it one start but I guess zero doesn t count here.
still on page 13 - still on page thirteen... had to buy it for my course...lots of information...
Very Readable - The other reviewers give a good technical insight into this book... so here s one that isn t too technical. The book is very readable, although if you re like me, you will never read a CS book from start to finish. Amount of white space is ok, but colour would have been an advantage. Maybe it s just me, but I find books that cram as much information into as small a space as possible (Java in a Nutshell, Expert Systems by Jackson) and with font sizes equivilant to MS Word Size 8 absolutely impossible to enjoy.Chapters are very well laid out. Helped me through 2nd Year Systems Software module. This was our course text and the lectures were based on this book.
The choice for a general OS course. - I had in my hands the first edition of this book and I can assure that this second edition is a big improvement: now it really is modern. The book covers all of the theoretical aspects of a modern OS, but some chapters are real gems. For example, the chapter on security is a little 100 pages book inside a book. This comes as no surprise considering the interest prof. Tanenbaum have always showed for security issues (e.g. he reserved to security an equally wide space in his Computer Networks book).Tanenbaum has a gift for explaining and entertaining, and sometime make you ponder about evolutions of technologies, influences on society and other points like these that helps you to have a break when studying has started many hours before.I ve used this book, Silberschatz s and Stalling s for my exam on OS. Comparing them on a day by day studying basis, I have no doubt this would be the only one I d keep if I should, although both Silberschatz s and Stalling s (this one more) have proved very useful as well.
