Linux Internals [With CDROM]

As the introduction to the book says (by a RedHat kernel developer), this book is a "reference work to be used to look up the Linux Kernel concepts." The author mostly breezes through the basics and jumps right into the source code and hi-powered concepts such as SMP.For a primer to the Linux source code and concepts, I found "Linux Kernel Internals" by M. Beck et al. far more useful (although it only covers Linux 2.0). That book goes through such procedures as compiling and debugging the kernel, which I really needed to know. This is not to discredit "Linux Internals", it just seems like the two books target different audiences.

This is a book for people who want to have an overall understanding of the Linux kernel 2.4 without wanting to know each and every function name by heart. It shows how the main components work and what the design decisions were behind them. The source code in each chapter makes it easy to check with what is explained. You must know the Linux basics, though (as Bar says in the introductory chapter), to be able to keep up with the author. Overall a very good book and it sure helped me grasp just what the Linux kernel is about. Al Stevens of Dr. Dobbs Journal likes the book, too by the way.

Previous to this book I did not know what makes a Linux kernel. Sure, I had read various articles here and there. But this book really explained the inner workings of the new Linux 2.4.0 version to me in easy language. I had to read it several times because some of the concepts of kernels really are challenging, at least to me. Now, I know where to go look in the source code whenever I want to get deeper knowledge.The author did a good job explaining even elementary kernel funcitonality and basic OS theory. The part on journalling file systme is the first comprehensible explanation of the subject I have seen.

This is a surprising readable book considering that highly technical topics such as this are often difficult to write about. It is certainly a much better read than the other books about the Linux kernel currently in print. As the author points out in the preface, this book is not intended as a full source code commentary of the kernel, rather it focuses upon describing those parts of the kernel that are relevant to performance issues of the OS and user applications. Certainly some esoteric topics of particular interest to kernel hackers are likely missing but on the other hand more practical topics such as filesystems (including JFS and LVM) and signal handling are well covered.The author's writing style can be a bit obtrusive at times and it would have been nice if a good technical editor had also corrected some of the more glaring errors such as "next'ed" instead of "nested" or the overuse of the adverb "excellently". The extracts of code from the kernel are generally well selected and short enough to comprehend along the with associated discussion. Overall, I would recommend this book to someone already knowledgeable with Linux and familiar with C programming who would like to obtain a better grasp of how the kernel is designed and what the resulting implications are for the performance of the system.

This book is for people who know the basics of an operating system. If you are one of these, then you will enjoy the no-frills to-the-point style of the author. He succeeds in explaining some of the darkest spots of Linux. It helps to be fluent in C. All the fundamental building blocks of Linux are mentioned. It's not easy reading, but then a kernel is not a trivial subject either.