Operating Systems

[Cracauer]

That link to the Tannenbaumish material isn't quite to my liking. It doesn't even know about virtual memory. While you can argue that it is easier to understand this way you also learn something that is not relevant anymore.

This is what I recommend:
http://www.amazon.com/Design-Impleme...0875289&sr=8-1

Unfortunately books about the Linux kernel are general very poor self-teaching material, the above BSD book is based on a classic book. Everything in there is relevant, it has virtual memory and modern filesystems. That doesn't mean that the FreeBSD kernel still looks like the book says but at least you got a fighting chance. This is probably the best combo of book and running(!) kernel you can get.

[lostinxlation]

hmm I see that makes sense. Do you have a book that you would recommend?

If you don't know much about computer architecture, "Computer Organization & Design" written by John Hennessy and David Patterson is a good start. Don't be confused with another book written by the same authors, "Computer Architecture, quantitative analysis', which is a book with much advanced topic for processor performance analysis.

[JDShu]

If you don't know much about computer architecture, "Computer Organization & Design" written by John Hennessy and David Patterson is a good start. Don't be confused with another book written by the same authors, "Computer Architecture, quantitative analysis', which is a book with much advanced topic for processor performance analysis.

I got a hold of the book and its a great read, thanks!

[phrostbyte]

Wikipedia believe it or not is a pretty decent resource for this kind of stuff, if you know where to look.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutex
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semapho...programming%29
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thread_...ter_science%29
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Process_scheduling
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interrupts
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real-time_OS
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_memory

[phrostbyte]

Of course after you get a grasp of the fundamentals, it's always worth looking at a production kernel to see how it might be structured. Hey, I know of such production kernel. It's called the "Linux kernel".

But you can get Linus's branch quite easily, this command will spit it in the directory of your choosing (install git-core):

git clone git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6.git

Some interesting stuff is in the arch/x86/boot directory.