Customer Reviews

Linux Core Kernel Commentary, 2nd Edition

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

 

 

I am reviewing the 2nd edition of this book, which talks about the 2.4.x kernels.

This book is unusual in that a lot of it is just the Linux kernel source code; I was only interested in the content from the author, which is roughly the equivalent of a 250 page book. Having the source code as one monolithic printout is nice because the author can put a pointer to the code from the text rather than having to put a zillion code snippets inline with the text; I rarely read code snippets anyway.

In this book I wanted to read about: what is the high level architecture of the kernel; what are the design details of its "core" elements; for each element, what are the key data structures and functions in its implementation; what are some examples of the use of those functions and data structures.

For what I wanted, I think this book is great. I would not hesitate to compare it to the outstanding "Linux Device Drivers" and "Understanding the Linux Kernel" books. I don't know of any comparably high quality sources of this kind of information right now (it is December 2001), except for the also excellent "Linux 2.4 Kernel Internals" guide by Tigran Aivazian.

For someone looking to see good documentation for a particular file in the kernel source code, I would say don't assume you are going to find it in this book. This book covers _some_ of the source. Also, it does not teach you how to interact with the kernel by writing network drivers, filesystem drivers, hardware device drivers, etc.

WARNING: If you order this book, you are very
likely to get something completely unexpected.

The ISBN-13 for the book is 978-1588801494.
You are likely to get shipped the CD,

Slum Village Fantastic Vol. 2,

a CD with the EAN: 7-88581-01497-4.

Note that most of the sellers' names have clues
that they are primarily sellers of music CDs,
DVDs, etc. -- not book dealers. Their feedback
history also has clues about what they sell.

Sorry, this is not a review of the book, itself.
But, I have yet to see the book.

I completely subscribe by the long list of this book's shortcomings mentioned by the previous reviewers (total lack of coverage for the IP stack, for one), however the one thing that gives me the most heartburn is the total and blind adoration that the author displays for his subject. Obviously, this is the only OS kernel that Mr.Maxwell is familiar with, thus he has no reference point for comparison (I would suggest NetBSD). The source code that I am looking at, deserves lots and lots of critique, to put it mildly!

This book goes in to detail and explains how the kernel works. Recommend to people learning the working of the kernel

The product is an iPod dock. The reviews and descritions are for a book on Linux and a guide to cooking with marijuana. What can I say? It doesn't inspire confidence.