Modern Operating Systems (Goal): Amazon.co.uk: Andrew S. Tanenbaum: Books

Amazon.co.uk Review

For software development professionals and computer science students, Modern Operating Systems gives a solid conceptual overview of operating system design, including detailed case studies of Unix/Linux and Windows 2000.

Readers familiar with Tanenbaum's previous text, Operating Systems, know the author is a great proponent of simple design and hands-on experimentation. His earlier book came bundled with the source code for an operating system called Minux, a simple variant of Unix and the platform used by Linus Torvalds to develop Linux. Although this book does not come with any source code, he illustrates many of his points with code fragments (C, usually with Unix system calls).

The first half of Modern Operating Systems focuses on traditional operating systems concepts: processes, deadlocks, memory management, I/O, and file systems. There is nothing ground-breaking in these early chapters, but all topics are well covered, each including sections on current research and a set of student problems. It is the second half of the book that differentiates itself from older operating systems texts. Here, each chapter describes an element of what constitutes a modern operating system--awareness of multimedia applications, multiple processors, computer networks, and a high level of security. The chapter on multimedia functionality focuses on such features as handling massive files and providing video-on-demand. Included in the discussion on multiprocessor platforms are clustered computers and distributed computing. Finally, the importance of security is discussed--a lively enumeration of the scores of ways operating systems can be vulnerable to attack, from password security to computer viruses and Internet worms.

Included at the end of the book are case studies of two popular operating systems: Unix/Linux and Windows 2000. There is a bias toward the Unix/Linux approach, not surprising given the author's experience and academic bent, but this bias does not detract from Tanenbaum's analysis. Both operating systems are dissected, describing how each implements processes, file systems, memory management, and other operating system fundamentals.

Tanenbaum's mantra is a simple, accessible operating system design. Given that modern operating systems have extensive features, he is forced to reconcile physical size with simplicity. Towards this end, he makes frequent references to the Frederick Brooks classic The Mythical Man Month for wisdom on managing large, complex software development projects. He finds both Windows 2000 and Unix/Linux guilty of being too complicated--with a particular skewering of Windows 2000 and its "mammoth Win32 API". A primary culprit is the attempt to make operating systems more "user-friendly," which Tanenbaum views as an excuse for bloated code. The solution is to have smart people, the smallest possible team, and well-defined interactions between various operating systems components. Future operating system design will benefit if the advice in this book is taken to heart. --Pete Ostenson

Product Description

For introductory courses in Operating Systems in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, and Electrical Engineering programs.

This widely anticipated revision of a worldwide best seller incorporates the latest developments in operating systems technologies and contains complete chapters on computer security, multimedia operating systems, Windows 2000, and operating system design.

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13 of 13 people found the following review helpful

The choice for a general OS course. 27 Feb 2003

By G. Avvinti

Format:Hardcover

I had in my hands the first edition of this book and I can assure that this second edition is a big improvement: now it really is "modern". The book covers all of the theoretical aspects of a modern OS, but some chapters are real gems. For example, the chapter on security is a little 100 pages book inside a book. This comes as no surprise considering the interest prof. Tanenbaum have always showed for security issues (e.g. he reserved to security an equally wide space in his Computer Networks book).
Tanenbaum has a gift for explaining and entertaining, and sometime make you ponder about evolutions of technologies, influences on society and other points like these that helps you to "have a break" when studying has started many hours before.

I've used this book, Silberschatz's and Stalling's for my exam on OS. Comparing them on a day by day studying basis, I have no doubt this would be the only one I'd keep if I should, although both Silberschatz's and Stalling's (this one more) have proved very useful as well.

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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful

Easy and quick overview of modern operating system design. 10 Sep 2001

By A Customer

A general overview of how operating systems work with special emphasis on Windows 2000 and Linux. The first six chapters are more a general introduction to how computers work and could be an introductory text for almost any programmer. The rest of the book gets more interesting, even though nothing is ever described in any deep detail. The only sad thing about this book is a multitude of little errors in grammar, spelling and small inconsistencies between the text and the figures. It's clearly lacking in editing. But none of the little errors can lead to any important misunderstandings. The whole book can be read in a week or so, it's that easy and well written.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful

Excellent, thorough and well-written. Surprisingly readable. 23 April 2001

Format:Paperback

This book explains all of the details about OS development, covering interprocess communication (race conditions, semaphores, process scheduling) memory management (swapping, paging, associative memory, page replacement algorithms, segmentation), file systems (naming, structures, types, access, memory-mapped files, directory schemes), layering of protocols, client-server models, RPC, group communication, clocks, election, atomic transactions, deadlocks, threads, SMP, distributed file systems, and much much more.

This is an excellent book and is very detailed and well-written. It covers OSes generally as well as giving detailed real-world examples. In particular, it has very extensive case-studies for UNIX, MS-DOS, MACH and Amoeba. In addition, there are many problems set and comparisons drawn between different OSes. There is a small introduction to C in an appendix to facilitate reading some of the examples given in the book, although it should be stressed that emphasis is places on the concepts of operating system design rather than the author taking you through reams of code. There are plenty of diagrams to make things like process flow easier to understand. I found this book invaluable during the Operating Systems part of the Cambridge University Computer Science course.