About Book:

   Operating systems are an essential part of any computer system. Similarly, a course on operating systems is an essential part of any computer science education. This field is undergoing change at a breathtakingly rapid rate, as computers are now prevalent in virtually every application, from games for children through the most sophisticated planning tools for governments and multinational firms. Yet the fundamental concepts remain fairly clear, and it is on these that we base this book

         We wrote this book as a text for an introductory course in operating systems at the junior or senior undergraduate level or at the first-year graduate level. It provides a clear description of the concepts that underlie operating systems. As prerequisites, we assume that the reader is familiar with basic data structures, computer organization, and a high-level language, such as C. The hardware topics required for an understanding of operating systems are included in Chapter 2 For code examples, we use predominantly C as well as some Java, but the reader can still understand the algorithms without a thorough knowledge of these languages.

         The fundamental concepts and algorithms covered in the book are often based on those used in existing commercial operating systems. Our aim is to present these concepts and algorithms in a general setting that is not tied to one particular operating system. We present a large number of examples that pertain to the most popular operating systems, including Sun Microsystems Solaris 2, Linux, Microsoft MS-DOS, Windows NT, Windows 2000 and Windows XP, DEC VMS and TOPS-20, IBM OS/2, and the Apple Macintosh Operating System.

          Concepts are presented using intuitive descriptions. Important theoretical results are covered, but formal proofs are omitted. The bibliographical notes contain pointers to research papers in which results were first presented and proved, as well as references to material for further reading. In place of proots, figures and examples are used to suggest why we should expect the result in question to be true.