The Design of the UNIX Operating System

Totally not what was expected when buying from a US-based company. What are my options? The book cost less than the postage (shipped from US to UK).

Maurice Bach's The Design of the Unix Operating System still holds the place of honor on my technical reference bookshelf. After almost 20 years, it provides a clear overview of basic Unix organization and operations and is a model for how technical books should be written. Readers who complain that the text is dated evidently did not bother to notice the 1986 copyright date. Its age, however, has not diminished its clarity of content or usefulness in understanding the Unix operating system. Bach deserves an award for excellence in technical writing.

After becoming a Linux enthusiast, I bought the book "Understanding the Linux Kernel", which I unfortunately found to be almost completely impenetrable. I had heard good things about this book ("The Design of the UNIX Operating System") - in fact, I read somewhere that this was the book that taught Linus to write OS code. I put down the Linux book and picked up Maurice Bachs, which I found perfectly readable - it's abstract treatment of kernel algorithms made it easy to get the "big picture". Now, with Bach's complete treatment of the design philosophy under my belt, I'm going back to the linux kernel book, and I've found it to be a breeze... even the linux kernel source code itself now makes sense. This book is excellent for anybody who's serious about programming.

This book is a bit dated but IMHO it is simply the best book on computer technology or computer science that I have ever read. It is not too abstract and explains how something actually works, yet it does not get lost in details. It concisely explains the fundamental data structures, algorithms, and ideas of a real operating system - one that has had a major impact on all major operating systems today.

UNIX in its many derivatives is a 30-year old operating system. Why has it stood the test of time? Because it was designed with a simple philosophy: to give the user the ability to create his own tools to solve problems. This book has been a classic in UNIX architecture since it was published in 1987. Although some of the sections are a bit dated (e.g., IPC, file systems), it is still a valuable source of information. You will begin to understand the design philosophy of UNIX after reading this book. You will see why some of the design decisions were made (primarily due to the hardware of the time) and some of the really neat kluges that was devised to get around those problems. This book deserves its status as one of classics of UNIX literature. I highly recommend it.

This book has been around a while, but it's still hard to beat. It describes the design of the UNIX scheduler and file system. Most of the frequently used system calls are covered. The implementation the author covers is AT & T UNIX System V Release 2 and 3. The author is a fine writer. His explanations are clear, and pseudo-code is provided for most of the algorithms. Recommended for intermediate-to-advanced programmers who want to understand what's going on "under the hood."