Rating: 
Summary: Decent
Review: The book is fine except: 1. The chapter on semaphore and monitor is nearly impossible
to understand. Unless you're a mad scientist, you are
better off by skipping this chapter and go to the beach
instead. 2. The book is based on theory only. There is no programming
involved, which makes it somewhat impractical.
Rating: 
Summary: Great book, I learned a lot
Review: This is the first book that introduced me to operating systems and I'm reading it for a course. I'd have to say the author did a really good job in organizing such complex concepts into readable plain english. This is a really good introductory book and I really recommend it for people who wants to take a peek into the world of operating systems. I learned a lot from this book.
Rating:
Summary: Galvin or Stallings ??..I suggest both.
Review: No matter what how much a book conveys, when you hear it from you prof. the concept is all the more easier to understand and apply.I used this book and the OS book by William Stallings for my OS course this semester and I would say that it would be profitable to read selected chapters from both. For instance,Distributed Systems and protection are widely dealt with in this book,enough for an introductory course to OS concepts.But the book contains too much of theortical information.The diagrams in William Stallings book made more sense to me in understanding concepts like RAID.You look at the picture and thats enough.The concept just eases into your mind.
My prof. expertly presented the best from both books and I think that helped me learn the subject more easily. So if you ask me,grab a copy of both books and take the best out of each.
Happy reading.
Rating: 
Summary: Nice form factor
Review: This book has very nice dimensions. It fits in my hands quite nicely and can be read comfortably in any position. Well done!
Rating:
Summary: good, but not as good as it could be
Review: ... Plus points of the book:
- concepts explained clearly
- clear diagrams
- accompanying lecture notes on the Internet, "summaries"
- exercises that are VERY, VERY useful to get the ideas to sink in, & for exam preparation Minus points:
- what's with the dinosaurs!?!?!
- a bit too verbose; you get the feeling the authors just want to sound good sometimes, to the detriment of their explanations
- chapters not organized in a wholly comprehensible manner; i.e., some concepts are used in the early chapters, but are not dealt with until later, so you often have to skip backwards and forwards a lot -- let's just say you'll need at least 5 different bookmarks.
- the pseudo-code (Pascal) goes without sufficient explanation -- it is quite possible to get the completely wrong ideas from it unless you are already experienced in the field The negative points seem a bit too heavy, but this book is still a good one to have around for introducing general concepts -- think of it as: "Computer Biology 101". You begin to understand the functioning of the computer's body, and the logic underlying operating systems. However, for more specific details and clarification (especially when it comes to code) you will have to look elsewhere. I saw someone else recommend Stallings -- yes, William Stallings is much clearer, and doesn't waste his breath -- the code is well explained, and the chapters are actually set out in a comprehensible way. Plus he quotes Homer, which always wins my heart. For the exercises, though, Silberschatz & Galvin are better. (Pssst... don't tell anyone but... all the answers are on the internet!!!) If you want to see what this book is made of, I suggest you check out the online notes, which are basically summaries of the points covered in each chapter. ... . Good luck!
Rating:
Summary: Very good start for O/S's
Review: This book attempts to be a generic introduction to operating systems, and therefore never really gets super deep. It covers most of the basic tenents of how the O/S works, but generally demonstrates trivial solutions while only hinting at how real production systems handle the problems raised, but hey, this is an intro text. The first few chapters did seem more indepth to me, but it could just be that I had a fairly high understanding of the material by the time I reached the end. I do think it could have better illustrated the differences between Windows and the various *nix's, but it tried, and there was not an obvious bios for or against any particular O/S.
Rating:
Summary: Very well done
Review: I thought this book was very good. I used it to cram for a job interview. Being an EE with little software background, before I studied this book I knew very little about basic OS concepts. I studied the book cover-to-cover in a couple weeks and learned tons. During the big job interview I successfully answered all questions about tasks, mutual exclusion, priority inversion and other aspects of scheduling. (I got the job.) I disagree with one of the other reviews that says this book is confusing. I found the explanations to be very straight forward, and I don't even have a formal comp-sci background... By the way, I thought the Dinasaurs on the cover were very cool... If you're that confused about this stuff maybe consider another line of work. :-)
Rating:
Summary: Outstanding
Review: I have seen some previous comments that came along with 1/2 stars. The only thing I would like to say is that books that have
depth are not always easy to read. These require some effort from the reader.
Rating:
Summary: I'm glad I read it.
Review: Almost every chapter of this book clearly explains concepts and terms that I'd had only a vague understanding of before. It also does a good job of comparing how many different operating systems solve problems - not just a single operating system like most internals books. By discussing early and modern operating systems, it gives a good overview of OS evolution. It can be confusing at times, and it can be dry, but overall I found it a very valuable book.
Rating:
Summary: A really good book for students
Review: This book is a reference for persons who want to understand how modern operating systems works.
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