Customer Reviews

Distributed Operating Systems & Algorithms

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This book is probably useful only at the University of Florida, since it follows the course lectures exactly - and that, because the first author is the instructor.

The book reads like a series of lecture notes, nothing more, nothing less. Several ideas that a student of operating systems may need to take note of, when making the transition from single-machine systems to multi-machine, are listed here. You can think of this book as a listing of a few basic ideas, with small expansions of each - as in a slideshow presentation. The merit of the book ends there.

The topics covered - in other words, the expansions of the listed ideas - are treated in a confused, sketchy manner. The material is insubstantial and hardly thought provoking. Motivation is absent, and pedagogical methods seem a distant concept. There is a near-total isolation of concepts and practice, and reading the book gives the feeling of being isolated in a dreamy sphere that belongs only to the author.

One could go on about such demerits, but to summarize, you don't need to buy this book unless it's required for your class. It's a slideshow in hardcover format.

The best way to explain this book is, its a "good rough draft". Now go work on it some more. As is, the book is extremely hard to read. Crucial concepts are stated matter of factly, succinctly, and with little detail as possible, ie, just enough to get the point across (and that might be a stretch). The authors could make this a very good book, but they need to take much more time with every subject, and give more than one example. Furthermore the diagrams are sub-par. These diagrams could be greatly enhanced by professional technical artists. Also, the 2nd half of the book might be better interspersed with the 1st half. A *much* better read, with better diagrams, and a gentler approach on the exact same subject is "Distributed Operating Systems" by Andrew Tannenbaum.

I bought this book expecting that I can learn some fundamentals on distributed systems and algos. The author touched many areas - but even stuff that I know pretty well ( security ) wasn't explained in an easy-to-understand manner, sometimes too much prose to no avail. Even worse, sometimes I was a bit confused. I can only guess that the rest follows this way. If you are looking for GOOD book, better look for something else.

We here use it as textbook. How can a textbook have typos! And writing, sometimes even confuses me and I need to turn to other books for helps.

Albeit the author, Randy Chow, may have meant well in writing this Book, good intentions alone do not produce good books. The author claims that there is a need for a Book that balances theory with implementation. It is questionable whether Chow's Book accomplishes this synthesis but, unquestionably, terribly fails to provide us with reading of any intellectual usefulness. The Book is written in a style that could best be described as choppy, redundant, and overly simplistic. Further, the author seems to inundate us with his own interpretative viewpoints many of which are incorrect. The author should have spent more time in intensive communicative therapy expanding his vernacular of the English language before attempting writing a Book on this difficult subject. My recommendation is steer clear of this book and rely on the preexisting library of texts on this subject matter. That way you will at least not expose yourself to Randy Chow's further pollution of the English language, something that can very easily become contagious in a teaching environment. One must believe, that the University of Fl., where Mr. Chow teaches, is causing students to become mental midgets because of such poorly written textbooks which now seem to plague the Computer Science discipline. There is clearly a need to discourage mediocre faculty from authoring and inundating academia with such poorly written texts. Chow's preface gives all the reason and adequate forwarning not to purchase this Book. The preface clearly exhibits Mr. Chow's atrocious writing style which plagues the entire Book. Randy Chow's intellectual dwarfism is not that he attempted to write a Book, but that he failed to recognize he has not sufficently acquired the writing and intellectual skills needed to write a book that could be of any usefulness. I encourage Mr. Chow to attempt to write the same Book in his native tongue of Chinese though I doubt that even in fluent Chinese this would be a useful Book.

This is a not so good book, but our school uses it. I suggest the author to update some of the contents of the book.

This is good book and I have to buy it