Rating: 
Summary: Could have been better
Review: Like the title says, this could have been better. No doubt it's difficult to write a "modern" book on operating systems in such a tumultuous area. There were blatant errors, especially in examples, and it seemed like the "In The Hangar" sections were the most relevant parts of the book. However, coupled with the "Kernel Projects for Linux" book, it is much better. If you need it for a class, you have no choice. Otherwise I'd check out books by Tanenbaum or the "dinosaur" OS books.
Rating: 
Summary: One of the worst books ever
Review: Mr. Nutt is a terrible author. He teaches at the University of Colorado, Boulder and it is also well known that he publishes an update every semester forcing his poor students to buy the new edition. As the other reviews pointed out, not only was this book poorly written it is poorly edited with an onslaught of errors. If you are a college teacher looking for a book to use in your Operating Systems class, DO NOT USE THIS BOOK, it is a concatenation of all the bad parts of other good books on Operating Systems.
Rating:
Summary: Deadlock or Deadwrong
Review: Mr. Nutt is a terrible author. He teaches at the University of Colorado, Boulder and it is also well known that he publishes an update every semester forcing his poor students to buy the new edition. As the other reviews pointed out, not only was this book poorly written it is poorly edited with an onslaught of errors. If you are a college teacher looking for a book to use in your Operating Systems class, DO NOT USE THIS BOOK, it is a concatenation of all the bad parts of other good books on Operating Systems.
Rating:
Summary: Wordy, convoluted, boring
Review: Nutt spends an amazing number of pages covering simple topics, yet his writing is so convoluted, learning from this book is very difficult. He attempts to take a mathematical approach to such simple topics as first-come-first-served scheduling algorithm where the math simply confuses the matter. Overall, this book is boring and hard to understand.
Rating:
Summary: Nice Draft
Review: The content is well organized and the relevant information seems to be present. However, a lot of the pseudocode is blatantly wrong. This would be very misleading for an initiate to operating system design and implementation, the target audience for this book. If you know enough to recognize the errors in the pseudocode, you're too advanced to be reading this book. If you know less, you shouldn't be reading this book because its errors will undermine the foundation you're hoping to build. Your money is better spent on another book.
Rating: 
Summary: Very good intro book that covers a broad topic well
Review: There are many books written on the topic of Operating Systems, but no book covers all the major and even some not so popular Operating Systems so well. Anything from Pocket PC to Unix and Linux in detail: Distributed computing, clustered computing, virtual machines and everything in between. Various important topics in Operating System such as File management, Memory Management including virtual memory, Security and Networking topics are discussed in detail, and popular Operating Systems frequently used today are used as examples of how each subsystem is developed. Gary Nutt starts this book by going over the basic of Operating Systems. Its components, subsystems and more specifically what are know to be the most important component of a well established Operating System: Memory Subsystem, File System, I/O System and Process Management. The book takes a unique approach in introducing various components of an OS to the reader. The author assumes that the reader has some programming experience, which is a very good assumption, and instead of taking a bottom up approach, it takes a top down approach in showing the various aspects of an OS. In Chapter 2, the student/reader is shown a multi-threaded program in Linux/Unix and Windows. The programs in this chapter and all the subsequent chapters are used to bridge the gap between theory and actual practice in the design and implementation on an Operating System. Other books mainly talk about the various aspects of an OS, but none really actually shows the reader/student how it actually works under the hood via programming examples, and code samples. By the end of chapter 4, the reader has a fairly good understanding of what Operating Systems are made out of and what each component of an OS actually works, even down to the CPU level with interrupts and memory allocation.
Chapter 5 talks about Device Management: device drivers, various I/O strategies and it discusses the steps required to build be device manager. The lab at the end of the chapter is particularly interesting as it walks the student thru building a floppy disk driver.
The next four chapters are probably the most well written chapters on Process Management. As with the other parts of the book, the two main Operating Systems: Windows and Unix, are covered in detail and an emphasis is put on how these two OS's differ from each other and in what aspect. The author starts by talking a little abstractly about processes, their various states and how they fit into the overall architecture of an OS. The authors then goes into more specific details and talks about the various implementation details on Process Managers and what their job is. This pattern continues throughout the chapter with the author spending a bit of time on various aspect of a process manager, and then going deeper into it and talking about how Unix or Windows have implemented such function. The topic of process Synchronization which tends to be a very difficult topic to cover is probably the best written chapter in the entire book. The author uses coding samples from the get go to discuss the topic. The coding samples apply to Unix, but they are still very applicable to Windows. The author step by step peels the onion and teaches the student how process sync is done in an Operating System, and how the same techniques can be used in everyday programming practices. The labs at the end of these five chapters are very practical, as I have come across these same problems more than once in my professional life.
Memory Management is covered in the next two chapters. Paging and segmentation are covered in detail and the two labs focus on Memory Management topic in Windows and Unix. The interesting part about topic is that the author does not hesitate to use an old and obsolete Operating System, Multics, to convey to the reader how Memory Management is best done. The reader does get a solid understanding of how Memory Management is done in the popular OS's, however.
File Management and Security relatively small chapter in this book. The chapter in security is relatively a little dry, but I guess that's just the nature of the topic - not much can done about that. Very informative chapter, nonetheless.
Distributed Computing, Middleware, Networking and Distributed Programming cover some of the advanced topics at the end of this book. Chapter 20 and 21 gets down and dirty with comparing Linux with Windows. A head to head objective comparison of these two Operating Systems thru two case studies. I found these two chapters to be a very good closing to this book, as there is so much controversy surrounding these two OS's.
Overall, Gary Nutt has done a great job putting this textbook together. The organization, examples, labs and more importantly the contents are well worth the read. A students, this might be the best book covering the topic of Operating System as it covers by example and by showing the reader how it's done in the read world.
Rating:
Summary: Very good intro book that covers a broad topic well
Review: There are many books written on the topic of Operating Systems, but no book covers all the major and even some not so popular Operating Systems so well. Anything from Pocket PC to Unix and Linux in detail: Distributed computing, clustered computing, virtual machines and everything in between. Various important topics in Operating System such as File management, Memory Management including virtual memory, Security and Networking topics are discussed in detail, and popular Operating Systems frequently used today are used as examples of how each subsystem is developed. Gary Nutt starts this book by going over the basic of Operating Systems. Its components, subsystems and more specifically what are know to be the most important component of a well established Operating System: Memory Subsystem, File System, I/O System and Process Management. The book takes a unique approach in introducing various components of an OS to the reader. The author assumes that the reader has some programming experience, which is a very good assumption, and instead of taking a bottom up approach, it takes a top down approach in showing the various aspects of an OS. In Chapter 2, the student/reader is shown a multi-threaded program in Linux/Unix and Windows. The programs in this chapter and all the subsequent chapters are used to bridge the gap between theory and actual practice in the design and implementation on an Operating System. Other books mainly talk about the various aspects of an OS, but none really actually shows the reader/student how it actually works under the hood via programming examples, and code samples. By the end of chapter 4, the reader has a fairly good understanding of what Operating Systems are made out of and what each component of an OS actually works, even down to the CPU level with interrupts and memory allocation.
Chapter 5 talks about Device Management: device drivers, various I/O strategies and it discusses the steps required to build be device manager. The lab at the end of the chapter is particularly interesting as it walks the student thru building a floppy disk driver.
The next four chapters are probably the most well written chapters on Process Management. As with the other parts of the book, the two main Operating Systems: Windows and Unix, are covered in detail and an emphasis is put on how these two OS's differ from each other and in what aspect. The author starts by talking a little abstractly about processes, their various states and how they fit into the overall architecture of an OS. The authors then goes into more specific details and talks about the various implementation details on Process Managers and what their job is. This pattern continues throughout the chapter with the author spending a bit of time on various aspect of a process manager, and then going deeper into it and talking about how Unix or Windows have implemented such function. The topic of process Synchronization which tends to be a very difficult topic to cover is probably the best written chapter in the entire book. The author uses coding samples from the get go to discuss the topic. The coding samples apply to Unix, but they are still very applicable to Windows. The author step by step peels the onion and teaches the student how process sync is done in an Operating System, and how the same techniques can be used in everyday programming practices. The labs at the end of these five chapters are very practical, as I have come across these same problems more than once in my professional life.
Memory Management is covered in the next two chapters. Paging and segmentation are covered in detail and the two labs focus on Memory Management topic in Windows and Unix. The interesting part about topic is that the author does not hesitate to use an old and obsolete Operating System, Multics, to convey to the reader how Memory Management is best done. The reader does get a solid understanding of how Memory Management is done in the popular OS's, however.
File Management and Security relatively small chapter in this book. The chapter in security is relatively a little dry, but I guess that's just the nature of the topic - not much can done about that. Very informative chapter, nonetheless.
Distributed Computing, Middleware, Networking and Distributed Programming cover some of the advanced topics at the end of this book. Chapter 20 and 21 gets down and dirty with comparing Linux with Windows. A head to head objective comparison of these two Operating Systems thru two case studies. I found these two chapters to be a very good closing to this book, as there is so much controversy surrounding these two OS's.
Overall, Gary Nutt has done a great job putting this textbook together. The organization, examples, labs and more importantly the contents are well worth the read. A students, this might be the best book covering the topic of Operating System as it covers by example and by showing the reader how it's done in the read world.
Rating: 
Summary: Entertaining book
Review: This book excels at explaining the concepts and approaches of modern Operating Systems. It was an enjoyable and light reading on the subject. However, for a more in depth study of an OS, I would recommend Unix Internals by Vahalia and 4.4BSD by McKusick et. al.
Rating:
Summary: If your a teacher read this !!!
Review: This book is pretty criptic and not recommend for use in the class room. there are many other books which do a better job of covering more topics and providing better descriptions and solutions. if you are a teacher considering this book for an operating systems class please consider your students and look at something different. if you don't you will spend lots of time decifering the authors wonderful mathmatical formulations of the topics he does cover
Rating:
Summary: a disappointment
Review: This book seems to be poorly constructed. Halfway through a one semester community college course, my copy is falling apart. About the content, I find it difficult to follow and suggest supplementing this text with Stallings, Operating Systems, 3rd ed.
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