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Operating System Concepts (7th Edition) | 
 enlarge | Authors: Abraham Silberschatz, Peter Baer Galvin, Greg Gagne
Publisher: Wiley
Category: Book
Buy New: $66.40
New (20) Used (42) from $65.00
Rating:  16 reviews
Sales Rank: 7097
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 7
Pages: 944
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 3.6
Dimensions (in): 10.1 x 6.9 x 1.3
ISBN: 0471694665
Dewey Decimal Number: 005.43
EAN: 9780471694663
Publication Date: December 14, 2004
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
Another defining moment in the evolution of operating systems
Small footprint operating systems, such as those driving the handheld devices that the baby dinosaurs are using on the cover, are just one of the cutting-edge applications you'll find in Silberschatz, Galvin, and Gagne's Operating System Concepts, Seventh Edition.
By staying current, remaining relevant, and adapting to emerging course needs, this market-leading text has continued to define the operating systems course. This Seventh Edition not only presents the latest and most relevant systems, it also digs deeper to uncover those fundamental concepts that have remained constant throughout the evolution of today's operation systems. With this strong conceptual foundation in place, students can more easily understand the details related to specific systems.
New Adaptations
* Increased coverage of user perspective in Chapter 1.
* Increased coverage of OS design throughout.
* A new chapter on real-time and embedded systems (Chapter 19).
* A new chapter on multimedia (Chapter 20).
* Additional coverage of security and protection.
* Additional coverage of distributed programming.
* New exercises at the end of each chapter.
* New programming exercises and projects at the end of each chapter.
* New student-focused pedagogy and a new two-color design to enhance the learning process.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 11 more reviews...
 Excellent textbook on the design of operating systems January 14, 2006
calvinnme (Fredericksburg, Va)
19 out of 21 found this review helpful
All students of computer science need a fairly clear idea about what operating systems are and what should be expected from them. As a computer scientist you cannot just sneer at Microsoft Windows and say that it is not a well-designed OS without knowing what actually DOES constitute a well-designed OS. That is what this book is about- What constitutes a well-designed and complete operating system and all of the choices and design decisions that must be made along the way. Because this book is about operating system design concepts, you will find some pseudocode but not source code. If you want source code, the authors have an alternative edition, "Operating Systems Concepts with Java", published in 2003, where they offer actual design examples in the Java programming language. Although this is one of the best books published on operating system design, the high level of the discussion may cause the computer science student to find himself/herself asking exactly what is it to design an operating system? Thus a good companion to this book is an older text entitled "Design of the UNIX Operating System" by Bach. That book shows the implementation of the concepts of this book in the design of the UNIX operating system and also offers actual code. The two texts are best read together.
The first part of this book, the overview, may be especially confusing to a novice to the subject. The clarity of the book greatly improves in part two, process management. There all aspects of process management including threads, deadlock avoidance, and synchronization are described as well as how to accomplish them. This section of the book, as well as sections three and four on memory and storage management, are where "Design of the UNIX Operating System" will be most helpful in illustrating concepts. The rest of the sections of the book are on topics that are much more modern and thus it is hard to find good supplemental texts. The last section of the book offers actual case studies on Windows XP and Linux and contrasts the features of those operating systems with the theory of the book. Also, there are appendices that analyze the design concepts of three older operating systems (the FreeBSD System, The Mach System and Windows 2000 System) that are published electronically on the net.
To get the most from this book you should have already had a course in computer architecture at the upper undergraduate level and have some knowledge of a programming language such as C or Java so that you can implement and experiment with the concepts mentioned in this book.
New and Updated Seventh Edition March 3, 2005
John Matlock (Winnemucca, NV)
22 out of 25 found this review helpful
This new seventh edition of the book has been brought up to date to include recent developments in operating systems such as Windows XP and the new small footprint operating systems that work in hand held devices such as the Palm and in cell phones. In addition the text now corresponds to the suggestions from Computing Curricula 2001 for teaching operating systems.
Most of the book is on general purpose operating systems such as Linux and those from Microsoft. But at the end of the book there are chapters on other types of operating such as Real Time Operating Systems and MultiMedia OS's.
Finally there are some chapters which the authors call case studies. In these, one chapter goes into a detailed discussion of Linux, another chapter covers Windows XP. Chapter 23 covers several early operating systems that helped to define the features that make up modern os's. These include: Atlas, XDX-940, THE, RC 4000, CTSS, MULTICS, OS/360, and MACH, along with brief mentions of several others.
Note that this not a book on how to use operating systems, this is a book on how operating systems are designed. It is intended for upper level undergraduate students or first year graduate students.
GREAT BOOK September 11, 2005
Alessandro Ferrucci
7 out of 10 found this review helpful
I personally think this is a great book for a broad overview of OS's. Dont think it will go into any great programming detail, but there are other books for that. This is just for broad details. Very good for that reason I think.
Excellent! October 20, 2006
CF (Cleveland, OH USA)
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
We had to buy this book as part of our undergraduate Computer Engineering curriculum at The University of Akron. The book is very well written; I taught myself a lot by studying it.
This book was so good that I actually ended up telling one of my friends in Computer Engineering at Case about it, only to find out that 1) they use it there, too, and that 2) he thinks just as highly of the text.
Very Good Book on the Concepts Underlying Operating Systems July 8, 2005
David A. Lessnau (Niceville, FL USA)
28 out of 31 found this review helpful
From the 2nd paragraph of the preface, the authors:
"...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."
I'd say that's an excellent synopsis of this book. It's not a book on how to use or how to program operating systems. It's a book on the CONCEPTS underlying them. It's not as difficult to get through, but it's somewhat like Patterson's & Hennessy's "Computer Organization and Design: The Hardware/Software Interface" . Where that book looks at how computers work from the point of view of electrons whizzing by on the silicon, this book looks at how they work from the point of view of the operating system. Personally, I'd put the target educational level at no lower than the senior undergraduate level just because it'd probably be very difficult for a junior to have the necessary prerequisites. But, regardless, it's a well-written book that covers the topic decently. I rate it at 4 stars out of 5.
As an aside, Florida State University (FSU) uses this book in their COP 4610 course: "Operating Systems & Concurrent Programming."
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