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Using a balanced approach that is partly algorithmic and partly structuralist, this book systematically reviews the most significant results obtained in the study of computational complexity theory. KEY TOPICS: Considers properties of complexity classes, inclusions between classes, implications between several hypotheses about complexity classes, and identification of structural properties of sets that affect their computational complexity. Features over 120 worked examples, over 200 problems, and 400 figures.For those interested in complexity and computability, algorithm design, operations research, and combinational mathematic. ... Read more

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This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the Third Italian Conference on Algorithms and Complexity, CIAC'97, held in Rome, Italy in March 1997. The 25 revised full papers included in the volume were carefully selected from a total of 74 submissions; also included is an invited paper and an invited abstract. All in all, the papers present an interesting snapshot of current research activities and recent results in theory and applications of sequential, distributed, and parallel algorithms, data structures, and computational complexity. ... Read more

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The new edition of Understanding the Linux Kernel takes you on a guided tour through the most significant data structures, many algorithms, and programming tricks used in the kernel.Probing beyond the superficial features, the authors offer valuable insights to people who want to know how things really work inside their machine.Relevant segments of code are dissected and discussed line by line. The book covers more than just the functioning of the code, it explains the theoretical underpinnings for why Linux does things the way it does.The new edition of the book has been updated to cover version 2.4 of the kernel, which is quite different from version 2.2: the virtual memory system is entirely new, support for multiprocessor systems is improved, and whole new classes of hardware devices have been added.You'll learn what conditions bring out Linux's best performance, and how it meets the challenge of providing good system response during process scheduling, file access, and memory management in a wide variety of environments.If knowledge is power, then this book will help you make the most of your Linux system. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (13)

Real-World OS Nuts and Bolts
This book doesn't just talk about Linux; it talks about how a modern OS sitting on a modern architecture functions, in real detail.I have seen many OS texts, and this one is unique in that it does not attempt to teach theory, or academic examples.Want to understand scheduling, interrupts, file system abstractions, address spaces?Read this. Even if you don't use or care about Linux particularly.It will demystify these critical topics, which you can then apply to whatever platform or code you're working with, especially if you work with kernel or related components.

I am a professional software developer who works in drivers and OS subsystems.Although I have some exposure to various Unix flavors, I don't use any of them regularly-- I have most exposure to the NT architecture.This book has been invaluable in shoring up my fundamentals.The Windows book that most closely resembles this is Windows Internals from MS Press, which is a great book but doesn't (and cannot) delve too far into actual internal structures.

Note, though, that this book does not aim to teach you all this good generalist stuff-- it only does that by accident.It will gloss over the intro material in some cases to get into the code, which works for the explicit charter of the text (Linux kernel specifics), but might require the reader cross-referencing with an OS text.

The only Linux kernel book you need
There are two type of programmers, those who start with papers and those who start with code. If you are like me, who start with code, this is the only book you need to learn about linux kernel and to use it as a quick reference.

mixed, other books are better
I've been reading kernel books for nearly 20 years -- this is not recommended.

Some of the chapters and explanations I liked, others I felt were dry and lacking. The code examples seem to run through a non-deterministic preprocessor -- the code is supposed to describe 2.4.18, but the code snippets don't quite match the actual code (while generally working the same way, the algorithms/loop structure are often rewritten and the macros are sometimes expanded).I find it very useful when books comment on actual code examples, this is "kinda massaged code" -- I found it very frustrating when I actually looked at the kernel tree when they had snippets in the book.

I often found it necessary to look at the actual code to give more context (but the code rarely matched verbatim -- very strange).And when they did rewrite algorithms, I found thekernel 2.4.18 source to be MORE lucid.

The explanations without code were adequate, and I found some to be illuminating.Perhaps since the book has two authors, different authors wrote different chapters?(I liked some chapters and didn't like others).

If you want a general understanding of how kernels work, Andy Tanenbaum's "Operating Systems: Design and Implementation" where he elaborates on Minix is very useful -- with a complete Minix system (Minix is more of a teaching tool, which it does well, Linus looked at lMinix and wanted a more useful system, hence Linux).

I found Robert Love's "Linux Kernel Development" very good (I read the 1st edition, still need to read the second edtion).And Linux Device Drivers (Corbet and Rubini) is very good and has excellent examples (but the examples may need some work to build on a current kernel -- had this problem with the 2nd edition).

Exceptional treatment of the Linux Kernel
If you read and understand most of what is in this book, then you will be an expert on the internals of the Linux kernel. This book goes into great detail on all aspects of the kernel. I would recommend this book, as well as "Linux Kernel Development", to be used as supplements to a college course taught on operating systemswhere Linux is used as a reference OS implementation.

The book does a good job of making complicated concepts accessible, but the reader may need to noodle over some concepts a bit more than others in order to fully grasp them. This, however, doesn't take away from the pedigogical nature of the book.

Excellent Book on OS Design

If you are interested in OS design, or intend to work with the Linux
Kernel, Understanding the Linux Kernel is a very useful look into how
and why certian decisions were made in the Linux kernel.This book
doesn't seem to leave anything out.Example code is used very well to
show exactly what the authors are talking about.This would be an
excellent book for a course on OS design.
The second edition doesn't cover the 2.6 kernel,
which wasn't out at the time the book was published, but it still
provides a great resource for kernel information.

... Read more

Product Description
Purchase includes free access to book updates online and a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Chapters: Native Esperanto Speakers, George Soros, Kim J. Henriksen, Petr Ginz, Ino Kolbe, Daniel Bovet, List of Native Esperanto Speakers. Excerpt:Daniel Bovet Daniel Bovet (23 March 1907 8 April 1992) was a Swiss-born Italian pharmacologist who won the 1957 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his discovery of drugs that block the actions of specific neurotransmitters . He is best known for his discovery in 1937 of antihistamines , which block the neurotransmitter histamine and are used in allergy medication. His other research included work on chemotherapy , sulfa drugs , the sympathetic nervous system , the pharmacology of curare , and other neuropharmacological interests. Bovet was born in Fleurier , Switzerland . He was one of the few people who learned Esperanto as a first language . He graduated from the University of Geneva in 1927 and received his doctorate in 1929. Beginning in 1929 until 1947 he worked at the Pasteur Institute in Paris . He then moved in 1947 to the Istituto Superiore di Sanità ( Superior Institute of Health ) in Rome . In 1964, he became a professor in at the University of Sassari in Italy. From 1969 to 1971, he was the head of the National Research Council in Rome before stepping down to become a professor at the University of Rome La Sapienza . He retired in 1982. References (URLs online) Websites (URLs online) A hyperlinked version of this chapter is at George Soros George Soros (pronounced / s ro s/ or / s r s/, Hungarian IPA: ; born August 12, 1930, as Schwartz György ) is a Hungarian-American currency speculator , stock investor , businessman, philanthropist , and political activist . He became known as "the Man Who Broke the Bank of England" after he made a reported $1 billion during the 1992 Black Wednesday UK currency crisis. Soros is chairman... ... Read more

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This digital document is an article from Science and Its Times, brought to you by Gale®, a part of Cengage Learning, a world leader in e-research and educational publishing for libraries, schools and businesses.The length of the article is 692 words.The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase.You can view it with any web browser.The histories of science, technology, and mathematics merge with the study of humanities and social science in this interdisciplinary reference work. Essays on people, theories, discoveries, and concepts are combined with overviews, bibliographies of primary documents, and chronological elements to offer students a fascinating way to understand the impact of science on the course of human history and how science affects everyday life. Entries represent people and developments throughout the world, from about 2000 B.C. through the end of the twentieth century. ... Read more

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Chapters: Claude Piron, Edmond Privat, Hector Hodler, Ric Berger, Daniel Bovet, Hans Jakob, René de Saussure. Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 28. Not illustrated. Free updates online. Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Excerpt: Edmond Privat (17 August 1889 - August 28, 1962) was a Francophone Swiss Esperantist. A historian, university professor, author, journalist and peace activist, he was a graduate of the University of Geneva and a lecturer for the World Peace Foundation. His collective works consist of original dramas, poems, stories, textbooks and books about the Esperanto movement. Edmond Privat 1950caHaving already learned Esperanto in childhood, Privat and fellow student Hector Hodler founded in 1903 the journal Juna Esperantisto (The Young Esperantist). Though still an adolescent in 1905, he walked 600 kilometres to participate in the first World Congress of Esperanto in Boulogne-sur-Mer, France, where he spoke with mature eloquence. At the 1907 International Socialist Congress, Privat advocated the use of Esperanto by the International Socialist Bureau in Brussels.Privat served as a committee member of the World Esperanto Association (in Esperanto "UEA: Universala Esperanto-Asocio") beginning in 1912. From 1920 until 1934, he was editor-in-chief of Esperanto's eponymous official magazine. From 1924 until 1938 he was president of the UEA and at the same time president of the International Central Committee. He resigned after a scandal. Privat advanced the international Esperanto organization inside and outside UEA. His works History of the Esperanto language (in two volumes) and The Life of Zamenhof made him one of the most important historians of Esperanto. As the first historian of Esperanto and Zamenhof's first biographer, he used his connections within Swiss academia to further Esperanto. He authored a linguistic...More: http://booksllc.net/?id=13308836 ... Read more

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Chapters: Jean-Paul Marat, Charles Édouard Guillaume, Didier Cuche, Edouard Bovet, Léon Gallet, Daniel Bovet, Leo Lesquereux, Denis de Rougemont, Jacques Bizard, Francis Matthey, Dominique Othenin-Girard, Yann Richter. Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 54. Not illustrated. Free updates online. Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Excerpt: Jean-Paul Marat (24 May 1743 13 July 1793) was a Prussian-born physician, political theorist and scientist better known as a radical journalist and politician from the French Revolution. His journalism was renowned for its fiery character and uncompromising stance towards the new government, "enemies of the revolution" and basic reforms for the poorest members of society. Marat was one of the more extreme voices of the French Revolution and he became a vigorous defender of the Parisian sans-culottes; he broadcast his views through impassioned public speaking, essay writing, and newspaper journalism, which carried his message throughout France. Marat's radical denunciations of counter-revolutionaries supported much of the violence that occurred during the wartime phases of the French Revolution. His constant persecution of "enemies of the people," consistent condemnatory message, and uncanny prophetic powers brought him the trust of the populace and made him their unofficial link to the radical Jacobin group that came to power in June 1793. For the two months leading up to the downfall of the Girondin faction in June, he was one of the three most important men in France, alongside Georges Danton and Maximilien Robespierre. He was murdered in his bathtub by Charlotte Corday, a Girondin sympathizer. Jean-Paul Marat was born in Boudry in the Prussian principality of Neuchâtel, now part of Switzerland, on 24 May 1743. He was the second of nine children born to Jean Mara (Giovanni Mara), a native of Cagli...More: http://booksllc.net/?id=62182 ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (32)

Not for Beginners trying to understand about the Linux Kernel
If you are looking to start understanding as a beginner as to how the Linux Kernel works then this book will not do that for you simply because it throws too much of information at you all at once, some of it are actually "non-relevant" to Linux OS.

Yes understanding ANY Kernel not only Linux is not an easy job but the authors make us realize this in every page. I mean intelligence is basically converting a complex task or complex material into simple single line sentences which a Human mind can comprehend so that he/she can keep that material in his RAM. But Mr. Bovet does not do that, to an already difficult subject(the Kernel) , they try to dvelve deep into the different CPU registers at every single page. Yes we do know that whatever we do in the Kernel eventually boils down to the CPU registers but the very purpose of having the C program was to move away from the Assembly language and make things easier.

Take for example in Chapter 4: Interrupts and Exceptions. The Authors mention: An interrupt is usually defined as an event that alters the sequence of instructions of the processors. Such events correspond to electrical signals generated by hardware circuits both inside and outside the CPU Chip".

I think that it would have been better if the Authors simply said "An Interupt is what happens when the Hardware wants to communicate with the Kernel asynchronously"....Now would not that have sounded easier to understand??.

2nd drawback of this book is that while it mentions that it is good to have a reference of the source in front of you (which I did) but it does not tell you the exact C file from where the functions are being talked about. At the back of the book there is an Appendix where you can search through index and then find out the exact C file function the author is talking about.

If you want to do some Kernel hacking then browsing through the front and back of the book gets a bit frustrating.

I will give this book 3 stars simply and simply because it has TREMENDOUS INFORMATION. But will it help you?. I would say that if you want to do a PHD on the Linux Kernel to write a doctoral dissertation then read this book since while doing PHD you will have plenty of time(and money since the University is paying you) ....But if you want to be a KERNEL HACKER like me and want to be PRACTICAL in life and getting the job done quickly and efficiently then please ignore this book and read the one by Robert Love.

Linux is all about pragmatism and this book is quite the antithesis of that.

Nobody REALLY understands the Linux kernel, but this is as close as it comes
This book was one of the best aids I found for my first systems programming course (ECE 391 at UIUC). This book explains just about everything you need to understand (file systems, system calls + interrupts, the PIC, etc) in comprehensible English. This book is more conceptual in its coverage of the Linux kernel (as opposed to giving actual examples of code), but if you want to understand the rationale behind Linux design decisions, this book is at worst a fantastic start, and at best 100% necessary.

Great book, but not for beginners in Operating Systems
This is a great book and it's very dense. Be warned that although the first chapters quickly verse about some basic Operating Systems concepts, you will need more background to actually understand the underlying problems.

In my case, I learned the basics of Operating Systems and UNIX via the Andrew Tanenbaum books Operating Systems Design and Implementation (3rd Edition) and Modern Operating Systems (3rd Edition), which are very well written and provide a more historical perspective of UNIX systems designs, although there may be better options out there these days.

That said, this book is exactly what I needed: a very advanced guide into Linux internals.

The book is difficult to read
There are too many details accumulated together which makes a fresh reader who wants to know more about Linux always confused. There are a lot of space to improve so that the book is more easily to be read. For example,give high idea first, and then illustrate details one by one.
If you are new to Linux kernels, the book is not good at all.

Not Practical, Useless and Boring
I was searching (and still am) for a technical resource that I could leverage to understand the kernel in a useful way so I could compile custom, optimized Linux kernels specifically for customer server hardware architecture. I was hoping 'Understanding the Linux Kernel' would step through the kernel compilation process and explain each section of options during the build process and what all the available options are. Rather, this title drudges along for almost 1000 pages mired in archaic 'C' code and trivial low level Operating System constructs. Almost nothing in the book is of any practical value whatsoever for most users, except perhaps for the privileged Linux elite, who devote their lives to the minutiae of Linux kernel hacking.

'Understanding the Linux Kernel' reads like the most boring computer science course you have ever attended. Tedious, tiresome, and not for anyone other than the most dedicated academic scientists, don't waste your time on this title if you need practical Linux solutions that you can actually use to the benefit of real world Linux systems.

... Read more

Product Description
The papers in this volume were presented at the Second Italian Conference on Algorithms and Complexity, held in February 1994 in Rome. This biannual conference series is intended to present research contributions in theory and applications of sequential, parallel, and distributed algorithms, data structures, and computational complexity. The volume contains four invited presentations and 14 regular presentations selected from 32 submissions, each of which was evaluated by at least four program committee members. The invited presentations are by J. Hartmanis and S. Chari, A. Garg and R. Tamassia, S.C. Sahinalp and U. Vishkin, and M. Yannakakis. ... Read more

Product Description
Linux is presented too often as a casual hacker experiment. It hasincreasingly become not only a mission-critical part of many organizations,but a sophisticated display of programming skill. It incorporates manyadvanced operating system concepts and has proven itself extremely robust andefficient for a wide range of uses.Understanding the Linux Kernel helps readers understand how Linuxperforms best and how it meets the challenge of different environments. Theauthors introduce each topic by explaining its importance, and show how kerneloperations relate to the utilities that are familiar to Unix programmers andusers.Amazon.com Review
Understanding the Linux Kernel is intended to be read by those who are happy to check points off against the source code. The first thing you learn is how Linux, released from commercial constraints, is able to take advantage of the best ideas from other systems, implemented in wonderfully flexible ways. A good example is the Virtual File System (VFS), which has made it easy to add support for file systems from almost every other OS. It's fascinating to find out how such features are implemented. Then, there are loadable modules, I/O, scheduling, multitasking, multiprocessing, interrupts, spin locks, semaphores, and all of the other goodies that are involved in making a kernel work.

The authors are concerned primarily with the Linux 2.2 kernel. They discuss how Linus Torvald's decisions on kernel issues translate into architecture; for example, how the Linux memory management uses a slab allocator on top of a buddy system for greater efficiency. Similarly, at the cost of a little complexity, the decision to use three-level memory paging, when two work fine on 32-bit systems, makes it possible to port to 64-bit processors without changes. The tradeoffs between complexity and efficiency are discussed for most kernel features, and each chapter finishes with related new features in kernel 2.4.

Despite the lucid and knowledgeable writing, you'll come up against some brain-stretching complexity. Nevertheless, this book is an important addition to the Linux canon. --Steve Patient, Amazon.co.uk ... Read more

Customer Reviews (17)

Pretty good, but could be better
I've been using Linux mainly at the application level for a
few years now, and decided to go down to the kernel level. This book gave me a good introduction into the kernel internals. But I did find this book a bit heavy on code description, that I could of dug up myself. Telling me, which functions are called in a long descriptive list isn't really required if can view the source code yourself.
I also like lots of pictures to explain complex components such as memory management, the filesystem, etc. The pictures weren't bad, but could of been better. Why not describe a component based on pictures in each Chapter.
Overall a good start to learning the Linux kernel.

Great explanation of design
Note that this is not a book about using or setting up Linux; it's about how the kernel was programmed. I read through this book while working on a file system for a graduate course in operating systems. It clearly explains the logic behind many of the structures and algorithms. Reading those entries greatly prepared me for the design portion of my work and made appreciate the beauty of the Linux kernel, which up until reading this book, I had looked at as a toy OS.

now out of date, questionable accuracy even when it was new
This book covers linux kernel version 2.2, kernel version 2.4 is not covered. There are trivial comments at the conclusion of each chapter "looking ahead to 2.4" which are nearly worthless.
There is no worthwhile discussion of ACLs (access control lists).

Worst of all, even when the information was current it was of questionable accuracy. In the chapter discussing theVFS on page 334 there is a list of fields in the superblock object. Then compare this list to the list of the fields in the chapter discussing the ext2 filesystem superblock on page 499 and you will see great differences. Why is this?

O'reilly needs to update this book. It's a good start, now finish it.

Helped me get started on the Linux kernel
I just recently started working on the Linux kernel and this
book helped get me off the ground and going.I do wish it had
more depth and detail in some areas, but for the price I don't
think you can go wrong.For example, I needed much more detail
in the area of multiprocessing than this book provided.An
excellent companion book is "UNIX Systems for Modern Architectures: Symmetric Multiprocessing and Caching for Kernel
Programmers" by Curt Schimmel.This latter book provided the

extra background and depth for me to finally understand how
all the pieces fit together in this area.

simply the best
This is the linux kernel book thar makes the difference. Although I 've tried some other books on the subject it was "Understanding the Linux kernel" that gave me some answers to my questions. It covers anything (ok, except networking, it is the core kernel book) from booting to other topics with lots of diagrams. ... Read more

Product Description
The kernel handles all interactions between the CPU and the external world, and determines which programs will share processor time, in what order. It manages limited memory so well that hundreds of processes can share the system efficiently, and expertly organizes data transfers so that the CPU isn't kept waiting any longer than necessary for the relatively slow disks.The third edition of Understanding the Linux Kernel takes you on a guided tour of the most significant data structures, algorithms, and programming tricks used in the kernel. Probing beyond superficial features, the authors offer valuable insights to people who want to know how things really work inside their machine. Important Intel-specific features are discussed. Relevant segments of code are dissected line by line. But the book covers more than just the functioning of the code; it explains the theoretical underpinnings of why Linux does things the way it does. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (13)

Real-World OS Nuts and Bolts
This book doesn't just talk about Linux; it talks about how a modern OS sitting on a modern architecture functions, in real detail.I have seen many OS texts, and this one is unique in that it does not attempt to teach theory, or academic examples.Want to understand scheduling, interrupts, file system abstractions, address spaces?Read this. Even if you don't use or care about Linux particularly.It will demystify these critical topics, which you can then apply to whatever platform or code you're working with, especially if you work with kernel or related components.

I am a professional software developer who works in drivers and OS subsystems.Although I have some exposure to various Unix flavors, I don't use any of them regularly-- I have most exposure to the NT architecture.This book has been invaluable in shoring up my fundamentals.The Windows book that most closely resembles this is Windows Internals from MS Press, which is a great book but doesn't (and cannot) delve too far into actual internal structures.

Note, though, that this book does not aim to teach you all this good generalist stuff-- it only does that by accident.It will gloss over the intro material in some cases to get into the code, which works for the explicit charter of the text (Linux kernel specifics), but might require the reader cross-referencing with an OS text.

The only Linux kernel book you need
There are two type of programmers, those who start with papers and those who start with code. If you are like me, who start with code, this is the only book you need to learn about linux kernel and to use it as a quick reference.

mixed, other books are better
I've been reading kernel books for nearly 20 years -- this is not recommended.

Some of the chapters and explanations I liked, others I felt were dry and lacking. The code examples seem to run through a non-deterministic preprocessor -- the code is supposed to describe 2.4.18, but the code snippets don't quite match the actual code (while generally working the same way, the algorithms/loop structure are often rewritten and the macros are sometimes expanded).I find it very useful when books comment on actual code examples, this is "kinda massaged code" -- I found it very frustrating when I actually looked at the kernel tree when they had snippets in the book.

I often found it necessary to look at the actual code to give more context (but the code rarely matched verbatim -- very strange).And when they did rewrite algorithms, I found thekernel 2.4.18 source to be MORE lucid.

The explanations without code were adequate, and I found some to be illuminating.Perhaps since the book has two authors, different authors wrote different chapters?(I liked some chapters and didn't like others).

If you want a general understanding of how kernels work, Andy Tanenbaum's "Operating Systems: Design and Implementation" where he elaborates on Minix is very useful -- with a complete Minix system (Minix is more of a teaching tool, which it does well, Linus looked at lMinix and wanted a more useful system, hence Linux).

I found Robert Love's "Linux Kernel Development" very good (I read the 1st edition, still need to read the second edtion).And Linux Device Drivers (Corbet and Rubini) is very good and has excellent examples (but the examples may need some work to build on a current kernel -- had this problem with the 2nd edition).

Exceptional treatment of the Linux Kernel
If you read and understand most of what is in this book, then you will be an expert on the internals of the Linux kernel. This book goes into great detail on all aspects of the kernel. I would recommend this book, as well as "Linux Kernel Development", to be used as supplements to a college course taught on operating systemswhere Linux is used as a reference OS implementation.

The book does a good job of making complicated concepts accessible, but the reader may need to noodle over some concepts a bit more than others in order to fully grasp them. This, however, doesn't take away from the pedigogical nature of the book.

Excellent Book on OS Design

If you are interested in OS design, or intend to work with the Linux
Kernel, Understanding the Linux Kernel is a very useful look into how
and why certian decisions were made in the Linux kernel.This book
doesn't seem to leave anything out.Example code is used very well to
show exactly what the authors are talking about.This would be an
excellent book for a course on OS design.
The second edition doesn't cover the 2.6 kernel,
which wasn't out at the time the book was published, but it still
provides a great resource for kernel information.

... Read more

Product Description
"This is the International Edition. The content is in English, same as US version but different cover. Please DO NOT buy if you can not accept this difference.Ship from Shanghai China, please allow about 3 weeks on the way to US or Europe.Message me if you have any questions." ... Read more