Operating Systems: Three Easy Pieces

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.

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.

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

Available on Amazon as of today.

2015: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10182727

2014: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7076973

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.

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.

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...), 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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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/

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.

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.

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.

From a few days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18104600

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.

Great textbook

This is good!