Customer Reviews

Operating Systems: Internals and Design Principles (5th Edition) (GOAL Series)

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

 

 

My Operating Systems course used this book and we were assigned chapters to read every week. It was incredibly painful. This book does not read well at all. The ideas aren't very well motivated. Many times, Stallings just enumerates a list of alternate strategies for solving a problem without talking AT ALL about how the strategies came or why we should think about all these different strategies in the first place. He just lists and describes them. Very dry.

I eventually stopped reading the book and just used it as a reference when doing our open book online quizzes. This worked well. It's easy to find specific information ("How does Round Robin Scheduling work?") and the explanations are reasonably clear and concise. But if you're trying to actually read it sequentially to get the general idea, you're in for some pain (and sleepiness).

Its is by far the worst written textbook I have ever used. While the book touches on almost every type of OS design, it does so hap-hazardly, and without explaining why those designs were chosen. In short, Dr. Stallings writing style could use some improvement. The book is filled with wordy, redundant sentences, and pointless filler in almost every paragraph. What's worse, the book misuses list and figures - many lists have over 10 bullets (generally with a few paragraphs of explanation under them), and most of the figures are over annotated, and look too similar. Why bother to make list and figures if they must be explain by paragraph after paragraph of poorly worded pros?

...And it gets worse! Thought-out the whole book, Dr. Stallings fails to provide even one snippet of compliable code. The book rarely mentions how an OS designer would go about implementing his or her ideas, even though OS design is decidedly low-level - details are probably just as important as overall design for OSes.

Finally, the homework has nothing to do with what is covered in the book, and is horribly worded to boot. In one question, Stallings ask readers to ". describe exactly, in general..." How do I describe something exactly while keeping it general? This isn't the only question that leaves readers scratching their heads, in fact, I would say that no question is to the point, and manages to express what it is really asking.

Based on content alone I'd probably have given this book three stars. It contains a lot of outdated (read: mainframe-centric) information which I could probably overlook as an artifact of this being an old back that has been updated through the years to reflect the more PC-centric nature of the industry.

Unfortunately, I have to subtract a star because some of the problems at the ends of the chapters CAN'T BE ANSWERED BY THE INFORMATION CONTAINED WITHIN THE BOOK! Yep, you heard right, it has problems that relate to concepts not covered in the book. For example, in chapter 11 there are questions (11.7, 118) about record formats on magnetic tape that requires knowledge of concepts not covered anywhere in the chapter or elsewhere in the book.

Another interesting example of this is in chapter 1, which includes some problems (1.3, 1.4, 1.5) related to hardware concepts never discussed. What's particularly interesting about these questions is that they're IDENTICAL to questions asked in a different book (by a different author, Dr. Nikitas Alexandris) titled "Computer Systems Architecture: Microprocessor-Based Designs." That book actually COVERS the topics upon which the questions are based. What a concept, huh? Hopefully Dr. Alexandris knows that the questions from his title have been "borrowed" for this one, but in any case the questions are completely out of place in this book since it doesn't give the reader the information to be able to answer them.

My Operating Systems course used this book and we were assigned chapters that did not coincide. Lack of editing, and no source code for process and child process creation, nor thread or how a thread can spawn another thread. This book is incredibly disappointing. This book does not read well at all.

I would recommend Operating System Concepts by Abraham Silberschatz (updated for Windows XP)good for a college course.

I've just finished using this book for a course and I wanted to write a review while the information was still fresh in my mind. However because mine looks to be the only positive review I will probably fall into the trap of rebutting some of the other reviews.

First of all, I usually rate Stallings' books at 5 stars - they've taught me a lot. While this one isn't his best, it's nothing to sneeze at, and better than most texts on similar subjects. The writing is drier than his other texts, but it's fairly concise and very clear, difficult to achieve with such a technical subjct matter!

One reviewer complained that it was difficult to read through in one go - well what do you expect from a book about low-level operating system architecture, it's not Agatha Christie! I found it easy to follow, learn and summarise the concepts, the questions and problems were mostly relevant (and there were a lot, so choosing a subset wasn't hard) and mostly it was pretty interesting (if you happen to like this sort of stuff).

It's one fault is it fails to cover specific coding techniques and examples on an implementation level. However since this would have to be platform- or environment-specific, that's probably on purpose. I would guess most courses would have seperate course material covering implementation, depending on what environment they were interested in or was available.

All in all it's a good book and it'll help you learn stuff. That's the point right?

I am a nerd. As a student at the end of my Junior year, CS Grads wonder how I know more about topics they studied in 400 level courses than they do. The answer is simple; I enjoy learning. I read texts for fun.

With that in mind, I think this book may be the worst book on OSs that I have seen. It is incomplete and not enjoyable, even to the most enthusiastic student. I much prefer Tanenbaum's book to this.

BYU is dropping this book after using it for one semester of use. I am happy about that, but I only wish I could get a refund. This book is not a keeper.

This book serves as a good reference, as it contains just about every topic related to operating systems. Like an encyclopedia, however, this is not a book that you want to read cover to cover. While all the material is there, it is not necessarily in any logical order and the material is presented in an extremely dry but straight-forward manner. I found other operating system texts, such as Tanenbaum, to be better for tutorial-style learning. But as a reference text, this book can't be beat.

I always end up writing these reviews with some trepidation... Am I out to convince people to buy stuff or not to buy stuff?
What is the value of reading this if it doesn't express clearly buy or not buy? Is this product worth X dollars or not?
The answer, I think, is always up to the buyer.
All I can do is brief you on my experience with the product, like this book. Most of the reviewers here have given it thumbs down and I understand some of their points.
I had to use this book because of my schools decision...
It is not a waste as others might have you believe.
First of all, it was excellent for exam preparation. The review questions and the vocabulary check at the end of each chapter made it a quick search and find for last minute cramming.
Further, it is written with the student in mind and that translates into pages full of very valuable info packets, easy to retrieve and reuse.
I also found this book helpful for a paper on the EROS OS and that wasn't quite as cut and dried as it sounds since the author is Windows, UNIX, and LINUX centric.
Can it be improved ? No doubt.
Is it too expensive ? Yes, but then all text books are.
Bottom line: It can be an asset to your library, depending on your particular needs. It is a good beginning text for understanding Operating Systems.

I happened across this book in the library.

Call me an idiot. But unlike many of the other reviewers, I find it to be lucid, informative, and well-written.

The book seems to contain a lot of fluff, spending more time then necessary on trivial concepts, while spending too little time on important concepts, or presenting the important concepts unclearly.

The book is not horrible, and most concepts are covered adequately.