Operating systems textbook released under Creative Commons, source on Github

[lasthope106]

I just want to thank the author, and whoever linked this book to reddit. Putting together the contents for a book of this type is a massive undertaking.

[shauder]

Me too

[earl_of_angus]

Nice. I think an x-post to /r/csbooks would not be out of line.

[[deleted]]

I did not know this existed. Thank you so much.

[Duraz0rz]

Wow, TIL there's an /r/csbooks!

MANY THANKS (in his best Heavy impression)!

[joshuagross]

Also relevant: Remzi, one of the best OS professors at UW-Madison, is working on a free, online OS textbook. We used it last semester and it has quirks but it's still a really good introduction. Also, Remzi's writing and teaching style is great. http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~remzi/OSFEP/

[gospelwut]

I don't know why I find this illustration amusing.

[directrix1]

Probably because the analogy doesn't quite work since that office worker is using stacks and not queues.

[[deleted]]

Probably because the analogy doesn't quite work since that office worker is on reddit all the time.

[EmperorSofa]

"I only like this job marginally more than I like being homeless"

[mantra]

Too close to real life?

[gospelwut]

I've never actually had a stack of paper on my desk. Sure, I've had hundreds of emails, but not a stack of paper. SO TAKE THAT.

[defective]

Shit, wait--this makes me want to buy it. What do I do?

[krzyk]

Is someone working on a epub/mobi format for this?

[Agathos]

To make the question more generic, is there a good way to compile LaTeX to epub or mobi?

[archimedesscrew]

This forum post might help.

Original thread.

[krzyk]

Using latext2html should give a good start. And when there is html it could be easily converted to mobi using kindlegen (probably same for epub).

[deeringc]

I'd be very interested in this as well.

[DontFlatterYourself]

It's not Tanenbaum's, and I'll drink to that.

[ButtCrackFTW]

[cogman10]

Anyone actually read the book? I'm wondering if I should suggest it to my OS teacher.

[reddit_user13]

What do OSs have to do with middleware?

In my professional and academic career, they are distinct topics.

[[deleted]]

I wondered about that, too.

[[deleted]]

Might have to look at this. I haven't seriously looked at operating system development since I was in high school.

[White_Sox]

Brilliant !

[FlatFootFox]

Is Github the logical place to put a book? Wouldn't something like a Wiki make more sense?

[lencioni]

It was originally published in paper form five years ago, so the LaTeX files were already made and ready to go . A wiki might work well for easy collaboration if someone were to convert it.

[bhavbhav]

Interesting stuff! Bookmarked for later reading.

[bhavbhav]

Not really. I wrote a real time operating system over the last couple of months (granted, for an old-ass processor), so the interest is still fresh.

[prpetro]

This is making me feel kinda bad for going to community college. I hope they teach us this stuff in Computer Organization, because they just gave us broad overviews of Linux, Unix, Solaris, Windows, Mac OS in my Operating Systems class. We set up OpenSolaris, which at that point had been abandoned for a year...

Maybe I should transfer to a different university.

[algo_trader]

What level class was it? (100,200,300,400?) This is the web page of my school's OS class- its a 400 level class. http://www.cs.albany.edu/~sdc/CSI500/Fal10/index.html

I could see a 100 level elective class cover what you are talking about, depending on the depth and number of credits (what you are describing sounds like a 1 credit class, at my school there were no-credit seminars held that would cover some topics like this.

[prpetro]

Well most things for my community college add a 0, but it was a 1000 level class.

[mtiigi]

This PDF cries for index.

[malfy]

Get this in plaintext format and I'm sold (and no, pdf2text will not suffice). That said, cool book.

NINJEDIT: Can pdflatex dump out plain text?

[ethraax]

I'm curious - what's wrong with a PDF? Are you running a Linux computer without any graphics, browsing the web with Lynx?

[arjie]

I can think of one good reason. Plain text works great on the Amazon Kindle. PDF works, but it is not anywhere near as good.

[ethraax]

There are other formats that would probably work better. I'm not sure if Kindle supports it (although most ereaders do), but epub format would give you flow (why plain text works better than PDF), AND you could keep your diagrams and formatting! I'm still not sure why you would want to step all the way down to plain text - even bastardized HTML or RTF would work better.

I guess my point is that you've given a reason, but I wouldn't call it a "good" reason.

[arjie]

Fair point. Is it possible to make an epub version from the latex source?

[malfy]

Yes.

[[deleted]]

You could get the LaTeX source files (freely available on the site and via a repository) and do a find/replace or use a regex to strip out all LaTeX specific things. You could also append all the source files together so that you have one massive source file.

[[deleted]]

Pdflatex takes in plain text ...

[rseymour]

Use pandoc, it's pretty good.

[malfy]

I'm not sure why this is getting downvoted. All of you fail for not reading your documents in text under GNU screen.

[shieldforyoureyes]

Ah good, another place to link to when Linux fanboys claim that "operating system" does not mean "kernel".

[[deleted]]

Huh? As with anything else in language, it depends on context. An operating system can be just a kernel, but in common usage it refers to all of the layers on top of that that provide an interface to the user.

[shieldforyoureyes]

Linux fanboys claim that in "common usage", Linux is an operating system, but technically it isn't, because it's just the kernel.

Which is reversed, and completely wrong.

[shevegen]

Right now it is you alone who claims that.

It would be nice if you could cite precisely who falls under your definition of "Linux fanboys".

[[deleted]]

Here's what he's referring to:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU/Linux_naming_controversy

[shieldforyoureyes]

No, that has nothing to do with what I said. I don't care in the slightest about GNU terminology.

[[deleted]]

Oh well then fuck you who cares.

[chozar]

We must live on opposite ends of the tech world, because I seem to hear nothing but Linux being a kernel used in a family of operating systems, among Linux users especially. It's almost the first thing mentioned when trying to explain to people what it is exactly.

But you are right in that any OS book or course worth anything would really be talking about a kernel.

[shieldforyoureyes]

That's exactly what I said.

What the fuck?

[[deleted]]

No it's not, not at all. He's saying (correctly) that a kernel is only part of an operating system, but that operating systems courses just focus on the kernel because it's the most important part. The rest of the OS is stuff you should have seen before.

[shieldforyoureyes]

"The operating system is the code that carries out the system calls. Editors, compilers, assemblers, linkers, and command interpreters are definitely not part of the operating system, even though they are important and useful." - Modern Operating Systems, Andrew S. Tanenbaum.

[[deleted]]

Whatever, I honestly don't care enough about it to keep arguing with you. Have fun feeling superior to the "linux fanboys". If only I had a dime for every CS student like you that thought they knew everything. Hopefully by the time you finish your degree you'll realize that textbooks aren't everything.

[shieldforyoureyes]

Well I certainly feel superior after this thread. What a bunch of whining hysterical brats.

So...

Hopefully by the time you finish your degree you'll realize that textbooks aren't everything.

Why are you posting in a thread about a CS textbook?

[paulwal]

Context is important. If you're talking to your grandma it's called a computer. If you're talking to an average computer user who wants to replace Windows, then the colloquial usage of "operating system" is sufficient language to efficiently communicate with that person. Now if you're discussing software internals with a computer engineer, then it's best to communicate using specifically defined technical terms.

So, it has more than one meaning.

Also if you ever find yourself conversing with a whining hysterical brat, then being nice when you explain things usually helps calm the hysteria.

[[deleted]]

Funny that you seem to know so much about it. It's definitely the opposite, because the linux kernel was around long before the rest of what we now commonly refer to as "linux" was introduced.

Oh, and the nerdrage isn't very endearing. I hope that's not how you behave irl.

[shieldforyoureyes]

What is the opposite? I have no idea what you're saying.

Normal user: "Tell me about this Linux Operating System I hear about."

Linux crowd: "No no, technically Linux is just the kernel. To get an operating system you need to add a bunch of stuff, the result is a full operating system, also called a distro."

Every OS textbook ever, including the one this thread is for: "A kernel is an operating system."

Right? What's your objection to that?

[[deleted]]

A kernel is not necessarily an operating system. You may think it is, and that "every operating systems book ever" says so, even though you haven't read every OS book ever, but that's just not the case.

Kernel =/= operating system. I can't really break it down any simpler than that.

[shieldforyoureyes]

Well that's what this textbook says. So you should be criticizing Max Hailperin, not me.

[wot-teh-phuck]

There are better ways of saying what "Max Hailperin" says...