Operating Systems (3rd Edition) (Hardcover)

by Gary Nutt (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
Operating Systems provides an understanding of contemporary operating system concepts by integrating the principles behind the design of all operating systems with how they are put into practice in the real world. Throughout, Gary Nutt provides a complete discussion of operating concepts and supplements this with real code examples, algorithms, and discussions about implementation issues. The book also includes many lab exercises that provide students with the opportunity to practice with Linux, UNIX, and Windows.

From the Author
Undergraduate OS textbooks vary in style from those that focus on a detailed discussion of a single OS to those that provide descriptions of concepts and issues for any OS. OS textbook styles also vary from conversational discussions to detailed discussions of meaty content on the details of an OS. Traditionally, books with meaty content are either very theoretical or mathematical, or address only a single OS; conversely, books that are easy to read tend to be so due to lack of content. Contemporary operating systems are very complex software. A book that lacks content fails to convey the requisite understanding to cope with actual operating systems; a book that focuses on only one OS does not provide the proper perspective on the discipline.

This book was written 6 years after writing a dense and formal book on OS concepts. It preserves the deep concepts, but pushes the formal treatment into later chapters (and even then, it is simplified over the earlier material). The student begins with informal explanations for the initial concepts, then gradually works up to subject matter that is described in more formal and precise terms.

The second edition of the book* also includes an extensive set of exercises for UNIX systems as well as extended discussions and examples from Windows NT, Mach, and other research OSes. This approach was taken to balance the conceptual material with concrete exercises to apply the concepts to UNIX. There are also complementary lab manuals for Windows NT exercises and Linux kernel exercises, if the student wishes to perform more in-depth experiments.

This material is reaching maturity; it has been reviewed by many professional reviewers, used by many instructors and many students. Most "errors" that remain in the code examples are due to misinterpretation of pseudo code rather than faulty algorithms.

------------ * Note: All comments dated before January 2000 refer to the first edition of the book. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 894 pages
• Publisher: Addison Wesley; 3 edition (July 13, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0201773449
• ISBN-13: 978-0201773446
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 7.7 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.1 out of 5 stars See all reviews (25 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #141,745 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Reading this book does more harm than good., October 28, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Operating Systems: A Modern Perspective (Hardcover)

I am using this book because i'm taking the ugrad OS course at CU Boulder. Guess what university the author is from. yeah, that's right. This is, quite possibly, one of the worst books ever written by a human being. If, hypothetically, one were to forgive the book for blatantly incorrect examples that obviously haven't even been checked or reviewed and have spawned more than a few bewildered discussions among my fellow students and I, for rediculous project suggestions, for its condescending tone, for the obnoxious little graphics and second-rate dull grey paper on which they're printed, it still remains that the book does an atrocious job of treating the history and current practice of operating systems. It seems to be leaving us with a horribly skewed general prospective on the field and a paucity of actual knowledge--thus, not only are we ill-prepared to design an operating system, but we are worse programmers for having adopted Nutt's sick and deviant way of thinking. If this seems too vague for you, let me simply say that more than a few vague, general discussions are clearly based not on UNIX, not even on NT, but on MS-DOS. The fact that i recognize the lineage of his thinking is a major source of embarrassment for me, but I must share it with you lest this book corrupt yet more fresh young minds. Those who enjoy kneeling and worshiping before mistakes IBM made twenty years ago will get a real kick out of this book--there are detailed discussions of bizzare things IBM did on old two-ton mainframes, extensive discussions of batch job scheduling and seek algorithms for ten-inch disk packs. Yet, for the rest of us, I can only say: if you have a copy of this book, I advise you to burn it immediately. I sure wish I could. If i can save just one poor soul from this book, I will die a happy man.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Nice Draft, December 8, 1999

By	Rob F. (Nashua, New Hampshire) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Operating Systems: A Modern Perspective (Hardcover)

The content is well organized and the relevant information seems to be present. However, a lot of the pseudocode is blatantly wrong. This would be very misleading for an initiate to operating system design and implementation, the target audience for this book. If you know enough to recognize the errors in the pseudocode, you're too advanced to be reading this book. If you know less, you shouldn't be reading this book because its errors will undermine the foundation you're hoping to build. Your money is better spent on another book.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars One of the worst books ever, July 1, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Operating Systems: A Modern Perspective, Lab Update (2nd Edition) (Hardcover)

I'm a systems researcher myself. I can't believe this book is allowed to be in publication. The writing is shoddy, and the relevancy of the material is fragmented. The poor quality is perfectly encapsulated by the two luminaries praising the book on the back cover. One is from Centre College, some liberal arts college I had never heard of; the other is supposedly a professor from the University of California, but upon closer investigation, he's only a staff member, not a real professor. This book has a second-hand feel to it throughout. If you're a student forced to use this book in college, I suggest you change colleges.