Guest post by Think OS is an introduction to Operating Systems for programmers.
In many computer science programs, Operating Systems is an advanced topic. By the time students take it, they usually know how to program in C, and they have probably taken a class in Computer Architecture. Usually the goal of the class is to expose students to the design and implementation of operating systems, with the implied assumption that some of them will do research in this area, or write part of an OS.
This book is intended for a different audience, and it has different goals. I developed it for a class at Olin College called Software Systems.
There is MikeOS : http://mikeos.berlios.de/
Or Minix3 : http://www.minix3.org/documentation/
Good stuff though
Kochise
Those are more about programming an OS or how to develop certain OS-specific subsystems, whereas after quickly browsing through the Think OS – PDF the book is more about generalized view on what services OSes provide for programmers and how these services may function. It doesn’t actually delve into any actual implementations or specifics as far as I can see.
It’s certainly a good primer for someone who is a total beginner and has no idea on what an OS really even is in the first place, but it doesn’t really lend to learning how to build one yourself.
I really liked this read and already forwarded it to a few people that I know. I like that the article focusses on the “what” instead of on the “how”. As all programmers know, the “what” is the most important thing that should be (temporarily, with a crayon) written in stone. The “how” is just the implementation and can change at a much faster pace. Of course the “how” is the really important thing once you start the actual programming and you have to make it all work as intended and within all the constraints that you have
WereCatf,
I skimmed through it too, it reads more as a primer to the C language along with some of it’s libraries than anything whatsoever to do with operating systems.
Not that I have a problem with this, but it’s title is a bit of a misnomer.
I wasn’t aware of green tea press, neat. It’d be nice if they had more advanced material for me though
https://github.com/AllenDowney/ThinkOS
It’s a draft (0.3), not very clear from the news. He probably would like to hear all your smart suggestions