Customer Reviews

Inside the JavaOS(TM) Operating System

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

THIS IS NOT A REVIEW. There are only two authors. They are Saulpaugh and Mirho. Book is only ~200 pages, not 350. <end>

Well written and thought provoking .. moreso than other textbooks of this type. Addresses those areas of Java which an OS needs to consider., and which I haven't seen discussed elsewhere. (ex: an API which provides a platform neutral equivalent to the NT registry).

The style is crisp and the implications of the original architectural goals are carefully tracked. Saulpaugh is apparently working towards a language-OS symbiotic relationship of the C-Unix variety, except here the language is Java, and the OS is ... JavaOS.

This book is an excellent case study in modern operating system design. It starts with a really good idea: take the programming abstraction provided by the Java Virtual Machine, and then add features for handling hardware (interrupts, memory management, booting, and so on). This makes it a lot easier to write and debug drivers, because you can write in Java, which makes device drivers only about 3 times harder than ordinary programs (as opposed to the 100 times on Windows or Unix).

The book is logically organized, and remarkably easy to read. (OS books, like OSs, can be very complex and difficult.) Its many diagrams are very clear, and they are great ways to visualize the constructions they're describing. The text flows well, and you can just read this book like a story.

There are a lot of clever ideas in JavaOS. It's the best-organized operating system kernel I've ever seen. I recommend this book to anybody interested in operating systems.

If you're going to be writing a device driver for JavaOS, or if you're planning on deploying for JavaOS, you need to read this book. It's definitely THE introduction to the subject, since it's straight from the designers.

I would give the book five stars except that I have to ding it one star for not including thread scheduling, and for not including a reference manual.

Saulpaugh is an architect on the JavaOS project within Sun so the information is first hand.

The book does cover the JavaOS fairly completely and covers how each component works. The writing is easy to understand and readable.

I would recommend this book for anyone who is using or considering to use JavaOS or Java-based Network Computers in their work. This book will give you a good background on how everything works so you can understand the pluses and minuses of the technology well.