Understanding Operating Systems (Hardcover)

~ (Author), Ann McIver-McHoes (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Review

"The book is wonderful. It is a joy to be able to provide students with a text that does such a good job at explaining how things work when it comes to operating systems."

---Tim Young, Indiana University—Purdue University Indianapolis

Product Description

This fourth edition blends operating systems theory and practice in a well-organized way. Its innovative two-part approach explores operating systems theory and development in the first section, and discusses the four most widely-used operating systems (MS-DOS, Windows, Linux, and UNIX) in the second. Each chapter has been updated for currency, and a brand-new chapter on System Security has been added.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 576 pages
• Publisher: Course Technology; 4 edition (March 8, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0534423663
• ISBN-13: 978-0534423667
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.2 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #725,307 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Complicated Concepts, Clearly Communicated, February 21, 2000

By	Ed Hayes (Pittsburgh, PA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Understanding Operating Systems (Hardcover)

This is a good introduction to how operating systems work -- not nearly as technical as hard-core books written for computer scientists. The first 11 chapters explains the common basics of all operating systems, how OS's manage main memory, processors, devices, files etc. The last 5 chapters describe specific OS's for PCs and mainframes, and how they apply the features discussed in the first 11 chapters.

Being an "old-teckie-timer", I've worked with the big, medium, and small boxes, in several operating systems, and many languauges. I've taught this stuff to non-techs, too. My task is always to "simplify and communicate, without losing the meaning". I'm a techo-translator. So are Flynn/McHoes.

As a classroom textbook or a supplement to a technical CS book, it's great because it's easy to read and understand. But it's not "OS for Dummies." I recommend it to anyone who wants to understand the nuts and bolts of operating systems without having to read or write the code that runs the machine.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Nice Introduction to Operating Systems, December 29, 2005

By	Siddhardha (Colorado, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Understanding Operating Systems, Third Edition (Hardcover)

The book is divided into two parts. The first part deals with the basics of operating systems which includes memory manager, processor manager, file manager, device manager and network manager. This part is presented in such a way that it can be easily comprehended by even novices and the authors did an excellent job here. The second part of the book deals with specific operating systems. Details about MS-DOS, Windows 2000, UNIX, OpenVMS Alpha and OS/390 operating systems are provided in this part. While there are few locations where the explanation is not very clear, for the most part it is understandable.

This book was a required text for an undergrad course in Operating Systems I was taking. I read it from cover to cover and overall I liked it very much. I would have liked to see more visuals, examples and exercises. I will not sell this book but I will keep it for future reference. Like another reviewer mentioned, some knowledge about computer peripherals is necessary to study this book, however no specific language is assumed. Highly recommended to those who are new to this topic.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Book, July 8, 2002

By	Larry Adams (Winchester, Virginia USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Understanding Operating Systems, Third Edition (Hardcover)

As a Professor in a Department Computer and Information Science at Shepherd College - I am constantly reviewing text books for our Computer Science Department. I recently took a Doctorate class in Operating Systems were this text was used. My opinion is that this text did a wonderful job explain memory management, scheduling, processing, and deadlocking. Chapters 1 through 8 spent a great deal of time explaining the theory of an operating system.

I only have a few complaints - the first one is the exercises at the end of the chapters. The exercises could have example throughout the text. Some of the questions were not written very well. I am a visual learning and the text needs more visual examples.

Overall - I liked the text and I will be using it in my CIS 390 Operating Systems course at Shepherd College.