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Operating Systems: Three Easy Pieces

pages.cs.wisc.edu

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Re: Operating Systems: Three Easy Pieces

#12

Heads up to anyone wanting to go through this book and use the code samples: they're all in Python 2. Don't let it deter you though, it's a fantastic book.

I'm working through this now and have been able to run all the Python code I've come across so far with Python 3. For example https://github.com/remzi-arpacidusseau/ostep-homework/blob/m... is written to run under either 2 or 3.

Hmm, perhaps I somehow ended up with a really old copy of the code. I downloaded a tar.gz or zip file with a bunch of Python 2-only code (it definitely did not run under Python 3, I ran it under `2to3` without issue) directly from the wisc.edu site.

Re: Operating Systems: Three Easy Pieces

#13
This book hadn’t been written yet when I was in undergrad. But this year, I found it and worked through it. Even with 20 years writing software professionally under my belt, the ways this book shifted my perceptions on topics I assumed I knew well was surprising!

I also find it charming that the book is co-authored by a married couple.

Re: Operating Systems: Three Easy Pieces

#16

This book hadn’t been written yet when I was in undergrad. But this year, I found it and worked through it. Even with 20 years writing software professionally under my belt, the ways this book shifted my perceptions on topics I assumed I knew well was surprising! I also find it charming that the book is co-authored by a married couple.

How do you go through it and how much time did it take?

Re: Operating Systems: Three Easy Pieces

#18
post #16

This book hadn’t been written yet when I was in undergrad. But this year, I found it and worked through it. Even with 20 years writing software professionally under my belt, the ways this book shifted my perceptions on topics I assumed I knew well was surprising! I also find it charming that the book is co-authored by a married couple.

How do you go through it and how much time did it take?

Personally, I was super interested in reviewing memory virtualization and memory paging.

The bulk of my effort went into a very focused two day push. 200 pages in total: Chapters 1-6, 11-16, 18-24. Postponing all the homework.

I did all this reading on an ipad, highlighting everything in different colors, and adding blank pages every now and then for personal notes.

I then built and booted xv6 under emulation and started hacking. I would then look up areas of interest from my exploration of XV6 in the Linux 1.0 sources (super easy if you use something like [bootlin]) and tried to find the corresponding concepts. Then I slowly stepped forward through the linux releases. 2.4, 2.6, etc. until I had some ideas about how those concepts manifest in the current Linux kernel.

[bootlin]: https://elixir.bootlin.com/linux/1.3.100/source

Re: Operating Systems: Three Easy Pieces

#19
I bought the paperback and read it front to back. Probably the most enjoyable technical book I've ever read. Before it, I considered low level systems programming an act of magic reserved for only the elite, but afterwards I felt like even I could do it.
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