My somewhat off-beat recommendation is "Lions' Commentary on UNIX 6th Edition with Source Code". The sources to a 1976 version of Unix written in an archaic dialect of C and targeting a long-dead CPU architecture are obviously not of immediate relevance to the modern world, and may well not be to your taste unless you already have some sympathy with the idea of retrocomputing. But if you do: 6th Edition is small enough that you really can read through the whole set of sources and understand pretty much how the whole thing is put together; the basic bones of the design are not so far away from Linux, so it gives you a workable conceptual model of what the shape of the Linux sources are and what the various important parts are; the commentary is really good, explaining the inscrutable but nudging you to figure things out yourself too; and overall it is practice in reading a large volume of somebody else's code, which is something you're going to be doing all the time if you work on Linux or any modern kernel. You probably also want a more theoretical and general book too, of course.
Ask HN: Recommended resources to learn the Linux kernel and OS theory?
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Re: Ask HN: Recommended resources to learn the Linux kernel and OS theory?
#22The O'Reilly book Understanding The Linux Kernel is fantastic. Starts you off in the deep end with memory management/addressing and fans out from there. Notably excludes networking, as the book is long enough without it.
Any suggestions for Linux networking? I have Understanding Linux Network Internals but it’s a bit dated.
I think it comes down to just understanding IP and TCP in general. Which I don't really (IP) or do sorta (TCP).
As far as kernel architecture, the rest of the system can work with the assumption "writes go into a buffer, reads come from a buffer, and the networking subsystem does the right thing in between", plus some stuff about DMA optimizations.
Re: Ask HN: Recommended resources to learn the Linux kernel and OS theory?
#23Linux Kernel Development By Robert Love and Operating Systems Concepts by Silberschatz are great resources.
Re: Ask HN: Recommended resources to learn the Linux kernel and OS theory?
#24Not very Linux specific but Tanenbaum's "Modern Operating Systems" is an excellent source for OS theory and very readable as well. It's an expensive book, but I found it worth its money.
I agree! I took Andy's class that he wrote the book for and it was one of the most influential classes I have ever taken. It is also one of the few books I have kept over the years and throughout all my travels.
Re: Ask HN: Recommended resources to learn the Linux kernel and OS theory?
#25Join us in /r/kernel. As a mod I'm always helping folks with questions like this, and our community frequently beats me to the punch.
Didn't know that existed. Will definitely check it out.
Re: Ask HN: Recommended resources to learn the Linux kernel and OS theory?
#26If you are still interested in FreeBSD, "The Design and Implementation of the Freebsd Operating System" is a fantastic book. It's a great guide in how a UNIX system and especially FreeBSD works and written by some of FreeBSD's most respected developers.
This is a great book, and while FreeBSD and Linux differ in a lot of ways, there are enough similarities to make it worth reading even if you're only interested in Linux.
Re: Ask HN: Recommended resources to learn the Linux kernel and OS theory?
#27The OSDev wiki can probably teach you anything you need to know about "OS theory" (and practice, mostly on x86): https://wiki.osdev.org/Expanded_Main_Page
Depending on your style of programming, I'd recommend maybe not working on Linux if you are trying to learn kernel development and OS internals.
Have you looked at Haiku (https://www.haiku-os.org/)? We have a very well organized and commented modular-monolitic kernel, and a pretty active development team with a wide range of experience levels. I'm more than happy to help you (or anyone else) learn OS development!
Some example Haiku kernel code:
* "load_image_internal()", which is responsible for creating processes: https://github.com/haiku/haiku/blob/master/src/system/kernel...
* a recent change by me to replace a global lock with two local ones: https://github.com/haiku/haiku/commit/37eda488be1c9fee242e8e...
Re: Ask HN: Recommended resources to learn the Linux kernel and OS theory?
#28The O'Reilly book Understanding The Linux Kernel is fantastic. Starts you off in the deep end with memory management/addressing and fans out from there. Notably excludes networking, as the book is long enough without it.
Any suggestions for Linux networking? I have Understanding Linux Network Internals but it’s a bit dated.
not exactly focused on Linux but a good resource on networking nevertheless: http://beej.us/guide/bgnet/
Re: Ask HN: Recommended resources to learn the Linux kernel and OS theory?
#29From not too long ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19225268
Re: Ask HN: Recommended resources to learn the Linux kernel and OS theory?
#30https://github.com/s-matyukevich/raspberry-pi-os
Matyukevich page on GitHub has lessons with accompanying code to develop a Linux OS for raspberry Pi. The author goes into kernel, processor initialization, interrupt handling, scheduler, implementing syscall, and virtual memory.
I like his approach for these reasons 1. Minimal workable code, 2. Points you to entry function in linux repo 3. Line commentary of those entry function
Note that it's also a somewhat short read as he focuses on the practical implementations instead of the theory.
I myself was hoping that the author continue developing the chapters on file system, drivers, and networking but seemed to have been on hiatus.