 "Interesting, accessible, humorous" | 2008-09-29 |
| - Reviewed By User: A1JA1RLMXMXK31 |
| This book was assigned for my Operating Systems course in college this semester. It is truly a great textbook, and this is coming from a student who has read (and avoided) a lot of textbooks. It makes the subject matter very easy to understand in a variety of ways that help illustrate the concepts for various types of learners. Among these are clear diagrams, very succinct snippets of well-documented code, and real-life examples and illustrative analogies that help you both understand and recall the material. Unlike many textbooks there is a healthy dose of humor in the book. I've actually laughed out loud a number of times at the witty remarks and silly examples Tanenbaum includes in the book (the illustration on the cover should have been the first clue that the author knows how to lighten things up). Bottom line, it's a great book if you want to learn about Operating Systems, be amused while doing it, and have the knowledge actually "stick". |
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| "Great Book" | 2008-06-11 |
| - Reviewed By User: A28VLIV2QOCH9O |
This is a great book for anyone interested in how operating systems
really work and might be thinking about writing their own OS. I found it to be a thrilling read.
John |
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 "Very informational, but not pragmatic" | 2007-03-04 |
| - Reviewed By nkparimi |
It's a very useful, informative book but I found it more esoteric than it needed to be - I speak from my experience as a computer science student who then went on to write software for a living. Unfortunately, I feel the problems described below plague most popular OS books today, including "Operating System Concepts by Silberschatz, Galvin, Gagne".
I'd like to break up the review rating into two parts:
Content and relevance to subject: 4/5
The book covers almost all aspects of what an operating system needs to to do and so is highly informational, from threads to memory management to I/O - the three most essential (and yet elusive) concepts in today's operating systems. The author does a good job of explaining, at each stage, the various design choices that an OS designer must make e.g. virtual memory - use free lists or bitmaps to do book-keeping of used and free physical memory. Most concepts are explained clearly and as such I found this book to be a good reference on OS design principles.
Applicability to real world issues: 2/5
Unfortunately a good reference is not always the best way to understand how things work in practice. The book discusses design choices at each step, but I feel what most computer science students need to learn first is how today's operating systems work - how does the threading scheduler in UNIX work? how does UNIX manage memory, so I as a software engineer can best make use of it? It's great to know all these design pricniples an OS has, but my experience was that when you're at your first job wondering why you're running out of physical memory or why your multi-threaded program keeps crashing, it helps immensely to know well exactly how your OS works, than the myriad choices that it can make. And let's face it - there aren't many OS's in the wold today - the UNIX family and Windows, which is modeled largely on UNIX (albeit not welll and with a few differences). I should point out that the book has a chapter each on UNIX and Winwos at the end, but by the time you reach the end of a 900-page book you're usually out of patience.
I have studied from the book by Silberschatz et al. as well, and I have the same complaint with each book - as a student I felt there was a huge disconnect between what the books talk about and knowing the guts of your UNIX or Windows system. Put it simply, I found the books were too "bookish". Unfortunately, I am not aware of any other mainstream OS book that does any better. I would love to see a book that discusses this critical subject in a different (and more enlightening) way - that discusses in detail how, say threads work in UNIX, and then elaborates on how else it could be done. So that at the end of it, you atleast know to make best use of the OS you work with (even if you don't fully understand how to design the next one). |
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| "Amazing" | 2006-02-26 |
| - Reviewed By favrot |
| I have been able to, using just this book, read and learn about operating systems in a very thorough and painless way. The writing is straightforward and really demystifies OSs. I am a college CS student taking an OS course and this has been an invaluable asset. |
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| "Very, very cool! One of the kind!" | 2005-07-22 |
| - Reviewed By User: A1J9PAFFM5JK03 |
This book is a very nice overview of contemporary conceptions of what is operating system would be and it discusses many facets of the issue. It does not overwhelm with technical details and does not press too much. I also followed an advise in someone's review and purchased "UNIX Essentials" DVD that is complete UNIX course recorded. These two nicely complement one another. You watch it and you read it. If you didn't catch it from the first try you watch it again and read it again. In two months I found myself confident to that extend that gave advises to our system administrator and he accepted them because there were subjects that he wasn't completely sure. What I can say, in three month I passed my first interview and got a job! Sure it is a way to start there much of more advanced reading that will take over you with a time however these two provide you with the BASIS!
I can't overstate how much I have learned from them. Don't be naive, though. You will have to learn and memorize many things. The fact of owning neither book nor DVD will not make you knowledgeable, but if you will work it trough, trust me, you will surprise many people around! |
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| "my favorite Computer Science book" | 2005-01-28 |
| - Reviewed By rionheart |
Just finished my bachelor's degree in Computer Science and looking back this is hands down the best, most readable textbook I had in college. It has a proud place on my book shelf. I can't claim to have read the *entire* book (though I was supposed to), but I read quite a lot of it and it was fascinating.
Tanenbaum covers the material in depth, but he has a relaxed, entertaining writing style that is engaging and amazingly easy to follow considering the weighty material. There are undoubtedly occasional mistakes, but unlike other books with more obtuse, "I am smarter than you" writing styles, you're actually awake enough to spot the mistakes when they show up. I don't ever remember being baffled by any mistakes. After reading the reviews by this book's few detractors, all I can do is shrug my shoulders and say that I loved it and that every classmate I talked to (including two roommates) wholeheartedly agreed.
By the way, I concur with an earlier reviewer in highly encouraging readers to read the case studies of Unix/Linux and Windows 2000 in chapters 10 & 11... fascinating stuff. |
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