
Operating Systems: Three Easy Pieces - jamesjue
http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~remzi/OSTEP/
======
tonysdg
Using this textbook right now for my grad-level OS class (I'm a student).
Definitely one of the most readable textbooks I've ever used -- the authors
actually try to impart some personality into the writing. I'm not 100% sold on
how they divide the book into 3 parts -- virtualization, concurrency,
persistence -- since not everything in an OS fits precisely into one section
(e.g., multi-core scheduling is in virtualization but could also fall under
concurency). Still, for the price (free/$10 enhanced PDF/$22 softcover) I'd
heartily recommend this book to anyone, and I hope it quickly becomes _the_
standard OS book.

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doctorsher
I love this book so much. It is a treasure. You can tell from the text the
Remzi and Andrea are natural educators, and their sense of humor makes you
want to read more.

Years ago when I used this book, I was blown away by the clarity and concision
of their explanations for non-trivial technical content. In particular, their
treatment of scheduling stuck out to me. To my knowledge, no other OS textbook
explains scheduling in such an intuitive way -- the typical treatment is more
like "meh, here's the zoo of scheduling algorithms". In this book, they start
with a long list of workload assumptions, and discuss the optimal scheduling
policies under these assumptions. As they relax assumptions, the optimal
scheduling policy changes.

Also, OSTEP seems to be in a better position to solicit feedback from readers
/ professors using the book than other operating systems textbooks. Remzi was
quite prompt and appreciative when I sent some suggestions.

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malvosenior
It's not clear from the headline, but version 1.0 of the book has just been
released:

[http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~remzi/OSTEP/combined.html](http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~remzi/OSTEP/combined.html)

Available on Amazon as of today.

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dang
2015:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10182727](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10182727)

2014:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7076973](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7076973)

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fermienrico
I’ve been studying Real-time operating systems (RTOS) and it’s fascinating.
While they’re incredibly basic, they offer a stepping stone into larger more
complex systems with file system, multi core, etc. RTOSes emphasize on “real-
time” or predictability while general operating systems, they focus on
throughput.

I recommend looking at FreeRTOS source code or building one from scratch.

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seawlf
I took the class this textbook is used for a couple of years ago at UW. Andrea
was a fantastic teacher and it was the easiest presentation of the material
I'd ever found! Seriously, read this textbook. It's full of wit and
information.

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enitihas
This is a really really good book on Operating Systems. Before this I had read
([http://codex.cs.yale.edu/avi/os-book/OS9/slide-
dir/index.htm...](http://codex.cs.yale.edu/avi/os-book/OS9/slide-
dir/index.html)), which is itself a really good book, but this one seemed more
funnier and less dry, and I think reading two OS books gives you a little
different perspective from each.

~~~
dfee
I was looking for the dinosaur os book in this thread!

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aqibgatoo
This is the best book on os handsdown. Does anybody know smiliar kinds of
books for computer science subjects

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jiveturkey
Surely this is some kind of joke.

What, a college textbook that doesn't require the purchase of a new edition
every year, or local insert that isn't part of the public text, or online
homework code? Yeah, right.

~~~
NegativeLatency
This was my profs book: [http://linear.ups.edu](http://linear.ups.edu)

I still ended up buying the hardcopy, but it was nice having it online for
free.

Sophomore year of college I released that I could buy a nice iPad, torrent my
course books, and come out ahead.

The online homework code is such a racket.

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wenbin
I took Remzi's (one of the authors) advanced os course when I was in Wisc as a
graduate student 8 years ago. I would say it's the best course I've ever had.

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mad_vill
I took this course at UW undergraduate and it was by far the most important
and enjoyable class I took in college.

Always read the footnotes in the text ... they are hilarious.

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tatoalo
I've used it for my university course regarding OS. But after the theorical
approach I've found incredibly useful to work directly with the OS-level code
(JOS OS, pretty fun), if someone is interested:
[https://pdos.csail.mit.edu/6.828/2012/](https://pdos.csail.mit.edu/6.828/2012/)

~~~
monocasa
Oh neat, JOS is an exokernel I haven't seen before.

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tatoalo
Virtual Memory Management seems like magic before looking at the code, that
feeling remains a little bit even after gazing at it if you ask me :)

~~~
monocasa
Yeah, exokernels tend to do VM management in a more split way than you might
see in other OSs that might be obfuscating the underlying concepts. I'd take a
look at how xv6 does it, as that's about as simple as it gets.

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Entalpi
Hands down one of the best textbooks on a CS topic that I have read. It was
actually FUN to read. If your trying to get started in OS fundamentals and
such this is a great book to start with.

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sitzkrieg
I bought and read the hardcover (0.91) and it was great, but the new version
has enough new stuff i wont feel bad buying another softcover copy, while
happily supporting the authors.

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notsrg
One of the best CS textbooks I've ever read. I recently reached out to my OS
prof because I couldn't remember the title. Funny to see it posted on HN a
couple days later.

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petecooper
From a few days ago:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18104600](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18104600)

~~~
pronoiac
You just linked the parent thread. It did come up in a conversation about xv6:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17592560](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17592560)

~~~
petecooper
You're quite right -- mea culpa.

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lgunsch
I've been reading it in my spare time for a few years now (I read slow). I've
thoroughly enjoyed it, and learned a lot.

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randomname2
Great textbook

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wanghan1110
This is good!

