As a software engineer who doesn't actually use FreeBSD, I used this book to get implementation ideas about how a kernel would solve some interesting problems and this book addressed this hunger for information quite well, with all its detailed explanations. For example, my favourite parts are where data structures and algorithms are described (eg. how to make thread scheduling constant time with its calendar queues) and other similar ideas. If nothing else, this would help me during interviews.
Now, some (hopefully constructive) criticism:
The book visual text layout style looks very unappealing at first, like a wall of text from my "System Software" teacher back in the school days. I've seen the preview and bought the book despite the initial reaction, knowing that the content is actually great. Would be nice to increase the variety of styling tools used (side notes such as when introducing a new word, interesting facts on the side, etc), similar to what you'd see in other school textbooks.
The organization seems a bit hard to follow: a lot of times, a topic is introduced, covered, and I feel deeply unsatisfied. Then another chapter later in the book would cover it deeper or from a different angle. Same goes for definitions: the term "superblock" was used 16 times before it was finally defined in 9.10, though I guess I could refer to a glossary.
A lot of figures are super hard to follow, and would need more explanation about what exactly is going on. For example, Figure 4.3 "Turnstile structures for blocked threads" made no sense to me no matter how hard I looked and how long I re-read the explanations. I loved the overall description on turnstiles though, thank you!
The whole section on network protocols seems vaguely applicable to FreeBSD kernel, though I wouldn't complain since it's free information. I happen to read a networking book in the past covering all the layers and I'm wondering there can be a balance in those chapters: introduce less details but keep enough of them so that the kernel operations still make sense to someone who doesn't have experience in networking. But then again, it's the first book that described Nagle algorithm in a way I could understand and I loved it. I don't know if any change is necessary, but that's the impression I got.
The print quality control seems to be poor: a few pages in my book are badly printed (very pale) and are hard to read for that reason. Not sure if a common occurrence, and I didn't feel like returning the book because hey, most of the pages are fine and I don't want to be wasteful.
- Hardcover: 928 pages
- Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional; 2 edition (September 15, 2014)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0321968972
- ISBN-13: 978-0321968975
- Product Dimensions: 6.3 x 1.4 x 9.3 inches
- Shipping Weight: 2.7 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
- Customer Reviews:
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Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
#305,814 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #18 in Computer Hardware Embedded Systems
- #8 in BSD Operating System
- #12 in Unix Administration
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