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I want to start learning internals of nix systems. Is this a good book to start with? Or is there a book on Linux (or any other nix OS) that I should begin with

by geekam 13y ago

I want to start learning internals of nix systems. Is this a good book to start with? Or is there a book on Linux (or any other nix OS) that I should begin with?

JSno 13y ago
dont waste your time on BSD anymore. Linux dominates.
- adamnemecek 13y ago
  You don't know what you are talking about.
- stormqloud 13y ago
  So not true. FreeBSD is a great server OS. With VM's hardware support gets less important for some use cases. IE LAMP. The ports selection in FreeBSD is second to none. Linux has nothing close. JuniperOS is retooled freebsd. Lots of imbedded projects are based on BSD and always will be. The insanity of GPL licensing. GPL3 is for activists and manifesto's. LGPL, GPL2 more then covered it for non activists.
  - adamnemecek 13y ago
    > JuniperOS is retooled freebsd. Same with Orbis OS, the OS powering PS4.
    - samuel 13y ago
      And NetApp's Data ONTAP...
  - throwaway812 13y ago
    > The ports selection in FreeBSD is second to none. Linux has nothing close. [citation needed]. If you mean Linux-just-the-kernel, sure? But that's not really comparable. Every Linux distro has a collection of 3rd-party packages; neither FreeBSD's 3rd party package integration (ports) nor breadth of software is particularly exceptional in this space. And FreeBSD doesn't seem to attract as many volunteers to keep its port collection up to date, or at least that has been my experience. > Lots of imbedded projects are based on BSD and always will be. The insanity of GPL licensing. Sure. I work on a BSD-derived embedded system at $DAYJOB. But the GPL doesn't prevent Linux use in lots of spaces.
    - stormqloud 13y ago
      GPL3 certainly does. Linux itself is fine with the GPL. Thats an OS only. The problem is usually the Linux dist. Their solution to the packages problem is to include the kitchen sink. Licensing is along the lines of "what's that". Ergo you use FreeBSD (or one of the others) when you need to have something to satisfy lawyers. It's all tracked. Companies can modify some minor bit for their "secret sauce" and bundle it up inside the vacuum cleaner. Not the hacker version. Since the internet of the future is the "internet of things" that's kinda important.
      - throwaway812 13y ago
        GPLv3 doesn't see very widespread use. Fedora tracks licenses on a package by package basis. You can fairly easily determine what the license of a library you use is, and recursively examine dependencies to see if there is something objectionable in there. FreeBSD ships GPLv3 ports (gcc47, ...). So... it's not just smooth sailing there, either. No need to hate on either platform.
  - herokusaki 13y ago
    >With VM's hardware support gets less important for some use cases. Speaking of, I wish jail-based FreeBSD VPSs were more widely available and cheaper. Where I've seen them the price is such that their use is hard to justify compared to Linux containers on RamNode or Digital Ocean.
    - nnq 13y ago
      > jail-based FreeBSD VPSs Isn't this called "shared FreeBSD hosting with shell access"? Like http://djangoeurope.com/ http://djangoeurope.com/ used to be, I think (I see they're Debian based now)...
      - Sanddancer 13y ago
        No. FreeBSD jails are different from a chroot jail -- it's much closer than OpenVZ than to something like Xen. You're running the core OS's kernel, but you have your own userland, namespaces, process space, etc.
  - dscrd 13y ago
    >The ports selection in FreeBSD is second to none. Linux has nothing close. Well... I don't know about that. The Debian repositories seem quite close to that offering, at least by their breadth. Arch Linux's core repositories offer a high quality up-to-date minimal set, while their community and AUR repos offer a very wide set of 3rd party software, even if the latter is not always reliable. Even though I like a lot about FreeBSD, I always found the ports the most awkward and error-prone part of it. And it's far too flexible, which for me was not worth the burden.
- ketralnis 13y ago
  Oh I'm sorry, we'll all stop using our own favourite toys and start using your favourite toys. Sorry for the inconvenience.
adamnemecek 13y ago
That kind of depends on your background. I think that this book is recommended in some OS college courses as complementary reading since it describes a full blown OS and not some simpler OS that might be better suited for teaching purposes. You might want to find some OS college course that has materials available online, work through that and read this as you go along or when you are done with the course.
cperciva 13y ago
If you want to understand how operating systems work, this is a very good book to start with. If you just want to learn enough to be able to use unix, look for something else. As the title says, this book is about design and implementation, not usage.
- geekam 13y ago
  I want to understand how Operating Systems work. Thanks. I did read the theory of OS by Silberschatz, Galvin et. al. I needed something that had more real-world orientation with source code references.
  - Nzen 13y ago
    To see another way that operating systems (could) have gone, you could read about Niklaus Wirth's Oberon system that Zurich university still uses and develops on. He & Jurg Gutknecht designed/built the system from processor & peripherals to the language and end user applications. Total stack consistency. * a better motivation: http://ignorethecode.net/blog/2009/04/22/oberon/ http://ignorethecode.net/blog/2009/04/22/oberon/ * Project Oberon pdf: http://www.inf.ethz.ch/personal/wirth/ http://www.inf.ethz.ch/personal/wirth/ * development branch head: http://bluebottle.ethz.ch/ http://bluebottle.ethz.ch/
myg204 13y ago
I recommend the xv6 source and commentary. Here's the link: http://pdos.csail.mit.edu/6.828/2012/xv6.html http://pdos.csail.mit.edu/6.828/2012/xv6.html (has a pdf you can print out along with C code listing, and with nice references). It's very similar in idea to Lyon's commentary but with a more modern C code base.
matt_heimer 13y ago
A little older but "The Magic Garden Explained: The Internals of UNIX System V Release 4, An Open Systems Design" is a really well written book for the core UNIX concepts.

by geekam 13y ago

I want to start learning internals of nix systems. Is this a good book to start with? Or is there a book on Linux (or any other nix OS) that I should begin with?

JSno 13y ago

dont waste your time on BSD anymore. Linux dominates.

adamnemecek 13y ago
You don't know what you are talking about.
stormqloud 13y ago
So not true. FreeBSD is a great server OS. With VM's hardware support gets less important for some use cases. IE LAMP. The ports selection in FreeBSD is second to none. Linux has nothing close. JuniperOS is retooled freebsd. Lots of imbedded projects are based on BSD and always will be. The insanity of GPL licensing. GPL3 is for activists and manifesto's. LGPL, GPL2 more then covered it for non activists.
- adamnemecek 13y ago
  > JuniperOS is retooled freebsd. Same with Orbis OS, the OS powering PS4.
  - samuel 13y ago
    And NetApp's Data ONTAP...
- throwaway812 13y ago
  > The ports selection in FreeBSD is second to none. Linux has nothing close. [citation needed]. If you mean Linux-just-the-kernel, sure? But that's not really comparable. Every Linux distro has a collection of 3rd-party packages; neither FreeBSD's 3rd party package integration (ports) nor breadth of software is particularly exceptional in this space. And FreeBSD doesn't seem to attract as many volunteers to keep its port collection up to date, or at least that has been my experience. > Lots of imbedded projects are based on BSD and always will be. The insanity of GPL licensing. Sure. I work on a BSD-derived embedded system at $DAYJOB. But the GPL doesn't prevent Linux use in lots of spaces.
  - stormqloud 13y ago
    GPL3 certainly does. Linux itself is fine with the GPL. Thats an OS only. The problem is usually the Linux dist. Their solution to the packages problem is to include the kitchen sink. Licensing is along the lines of "what's that". Ergo you use FreeBSD (or one of the others) when you need to have something to satisfy lawyers. It's all tracked. Companies can modify some minor bit for their "secret sauce" and bundle it up inside the vacuum cleaner. Not the hacker version. Since the internet of the future is the "internet of things" that's kinda important.
    - throwaway812 13y ago
      GPLv3 doesn't see very widespread use. Fedora tracks licenses on a package by package basis. You can fairly easily determine what the license of a library you use is, and recursively examine dependencies to see if there is something objectionable in there. FreeBSD ships GPLv3 ports (gcc47, ...). So... it's not just smooth sailing there, either. No need to hate on either platform.
- herokusaki 13y ago
  >With VM's hardware support gets less important for some use cases. Speaking of, I wish jail-based FreeBSD VPSs were more widely available and cheaper. Where I've seen them the price is such that their use is hard to justify compared to Linux containers on RamNode or Digital Ocean.
  - nnq 13y ago
    > jail-based FreeBSD VPSs Isn't this called "shared FreeBSD hosting with shell access"? Like http://djangoeurope.com/ http://djangoeurope.com/ used to be, I think (I see they're Debian based now)...
    - Sanddancer 13y ago
      No. FreeBSD jails are different from a chroot jail -- it's much closer than OpenVZ than to something like Xen. You're running the core OS's kernel, but you have your own userland, namespaces, process space, etc.
- dscrd 13y ago
  >The ports selection in FreeBSD is second to none. Linux has nothing close. Well... I don't know about that. The Debian repositories seem quite close to that offering, at least by their breadth. Arch Linux's core repositories offer a high quality up-to-date minimal set, while their community and AUR repos offer a very wide set of 3rd party software, even if the latter is not always reliable. Even though I like a lot about FreeBSD, I always found the ports the most awkward and error-prone part of it. And it's far too flexible, which for me was not worth the burden.
ketralnis 13y ago
Oh I'm sorry, we'll all stop using our own favourite toys and start using your favourite toys. Sorry for the inconvenience.

adamnemecek 13y ago

That kind of depends on your background. I think that this book is recommended in some OS college courses as complementary reading since it describes a full blown OS and not some simpler OS that might be better suited for teaching purposes. You might want to find some OS college course that has materials available online, work through that and read this as you go along or when you are done with the course.

cperciva 13y ago

If you want to understand how operating systems work, this is a very good book to start with. If you just want to learn enough to be able to use unix, look for something else. As the title says, this book is about design and implementation, not usage.

geekam 13y ago
I want to understand how Operating Systems work. Thanks. I did read the theory of OS by Silberschatz, Galvin et. al. I needed something that had more real-world orientation with source code references.
- Nzen 13y ago
  To see another way that operating systems (could) have gone, you could read about Niklaus Wirth's Oberon system that Zurich university still uses and develops on. He & Jurg Gutknecht designed/built the system from processor & peripherals to the language and end user applications. Total stack consistency. * a better motivation: http://ignorethecode.net/blog/2009/04/22/oberon/ http://ignorethecode.net/blog/2009/04/22/oberon/ * Project Oberon pdf: http://www.inf.ethz.ch/personal/wirth/ http://www.inf.ethz.ch/personal/wirth/ * development branch head: http://bluebottle.ethz.ch/ http://bluebottle.ethz.ch/

myg204 13y ago

I recommend the xv6 source and commentary. Here's the link: http://pdos.csail.mit.edu/6.828/2012/xv6.html http://pdos.csail.mit.edu/6.828/2012/xv6.html (has a pdf you can print out along with C code listing, and with nice references). It's very similar in idea to Lyon's commentary but with a more modern C code base.

matt_heimer 13y ago

A little older but "The Magic Garden Explained: The Internals of UNIX System V Release 4, An Open Systems Design" is a really well written book for the core UNIX concepts.