Rating: 
Summary: Good book but way too difficult to read.
Review: This was a required text for a university OS course. The book was very through in the number of topics it covered. However, I found the way the book was written to be very long winded and difficult to understand. I found myself searching on-line most of the time to find supplemental information. Even on basic concepts I had already read about in the book just so I could fully understand most of the topics. I still have the book today and have found it to be a useless reference. There is absolutely nothing clear and to the point anywhere in this book.
Rating: 
Summary: Good but get confusing in some parts
Review: I selected this book for teaching the Operating Systems course to my undergrad class. The reason was simple, it was the only latest book available on the OS concepts.But after going through the first 9 chapters, which are on intro to OS, process managment and memory management, the response I got from my students was that this book is very difficult to understand and I couldn't agree more. I wouldn't say that all the chapters are like that but yes, there are few chapters in the process management section which I had to teach them from outside resources, the only help I took from the book is the topics that were covered. Infact when I first took this course, I had a difficult time understanding these chapters myself from the book, so I couldn't expect the students to do so. One example is chapter 6, process synchronization, where they mention deadlock at many places, whereas the deadlock topic is discussed in the later chapter (chapter 7). Good for experienced but don't expect the students to go through this book without additional resources. By the way, can anyone explain the idea behind the dinasours on the cover?
Rating: 
Summary: Conceptually Good
Review: This book is a great book for learning concepts behind Operating System design. The writing is easy to follow and reads smoothly. The first six chapter are easy and can be taught as a high school class, after that the book picks up complexit and goes deeper into the concepts of Operating Systems. It's a very good book for those that want to know more about Operating Systems than how to use them, but don't care how to write them - the balance between those areas is found in this book. Their pseudocode is in Pascal (yes, that is a contradictory statement).It's not hard to follow but it sometimes lacks justification. At times, they have pseudocode and don't need it, or need it and don't have it.
Rating: 
Summary: Good, tough, informative
Review: This text is not for those without intestinal fortitude - anyway, its a good book, teaches the concepts, and will allow you to understand the components of an operating system. It will not teach you how to write one.....
Rating:
Summary: concepts overwhelmed by words
Review: I had a class in Operating System. I found this book so full of unusefull details that the concepts are completely drowned. I found myself always trying to understand what was really importand and what was details. I think this book could be great with 1/3 of the words actually used. Now I have on the shelf using it as a reference...
Rating:
Summary: Look at the title
Review: As the title says this book is about concepts on Operating Systems. From this point of view the book is written very carefully. At a first contact I felt it was too high level as said by another reviewer before. But the title says Concepts, actually. And concepts are explained very well, in a straightforward way. If you are concerned more with implementation issue, then you should look at Tanenbaum or the other book by Silberschatz that deals with implementation.
Rating:
Summary: There are better books
Review: I've taken two operating systems classes with this book now. It was as bad the second time around (using 5th edition) as it was the first. First off, the book gets high marks for "correctness." However, the book is written more to be "correct" than readable. By "correct" I mean that every possible variable that can impact the point being discussed is acknowledge as part of the sentence or paragraph. This often results in the main idea, which could and should have been stated in a simple, straight forward manner, being muddled. And as for the Chapters on Semaphores and Monitors - forget it. This book seems to go out of it's way to make the subject harder than it is - pretentiously so. I got the impression that Silberschatz was worried people would right in and say "On page 5, paragraph 3, sentence 2, you didn't acknowledge a particular point, which could impact your statement." So Silberschatz then goes and tweaks the sentence. What's the joke about Microsoft technical support? Absolutely correct and totally useless? This book has it's moments. If you're unluckly enough to have this book inflicted on you for a class, go check out chapter 2 and in Tanenbaum's "Modern Operating Systems", and skip semaphores and monitors in Silberschatz's book. Keep this one on your shelf as a reference.
Rating:
Summary: The best OS book
Review: Every Computer Science student should read it (like I did it). It covers all the basic aspects of modern Operating Systems : Process managment, CPU Scheduling, memory managment, Virtual memory, the File-System Interface and implementation, Input/Output Systems, Secondary storage structure, protection, security and especifies the Unix system. It's a very complete reference book apropriate for everyone you wants to know how a OS works.
Rating:
Summary: Good
Review: A very good text book. I have it and read through it. It gives you an introduction to OS. Very easy to read, and very easy to understand. Once you have built up your knowledge, you can start to read more advanced books.
Rating: 
Summary: Less than adequate for students
Review: I am currently using this book as a textbook in an introductory course in computer systems architecture. To say it falls short of the mark is to be very kind; this is absolutely the worst textbook I have ever used! Even if it were not filled with grammatical and punctuation errors (which it has in abundance!) it would still be unfit for use in this application. The authors make far too many assumptions regarding the knowledge of the readers of this book and make almost no effort to offer clarifying or explanatory passages to guide the student through this book. Even when examples are offered, they are just as confusing as the text, since they assume the reader is familiar with the commands and logical operators used in writing the algorithms presented as examples. A reader who is not familiar with these terms is left totally bewildered and still without any knowledge of the meaning of said algorithms. The very least they could have done is to include a glossary of terms and a listing of the programming commands and operators (with definitions) used in writing the algorithms in the book so that the reader can use them as a reference. This book may very well serve a purpose as a reference book for those already very familiar with operating systems architecture; but students (and educational institutions) should shy away from it, at least when it is offered for use in an introductory course. For me, it serves as an over-priced paperweight; I have to refer to other books to learn the subject I am currently studying.
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