Operating Systems, Third Edition

Rating:
Summary: stay far away
Review: This is probably the worst CS book I've ever read. Nutt has a real knack for making things that can be simply stated overly complicated and confusing. There are times when he'll spend several paragraphs trying to explain something which could have been explained in several sentences. Part of the problem is he's obsessed with set notation, which can be very useful in mathematics, but is totally useless in the context of what he's talking about. Other times instead of overexplaining things he'll underexplain it, things which aren't exactly obvious. Probably the two most annoying things about the book are: 1) the incoherent way the chapters are organized, you're left with a fragmented understanding of things, making it hard to put all the pieces together, and 2) he oversimplifies concepts early on in his book, foregoing a slightly more detailed explanation until later. But the way he does it makes you wonder what the truth really is. The whole book just feels like a bunch of jumbled concepts. Just look at the front cover.. Nutt thinks he's the conductor of them. But it's not music to my ears, just one loud cacophony.

Rating:
Summary: gah!
Review: Well first off being an applications programmer this book had alot of work to do to both make the topics interesting and understandable, well Mr. Nutt failed at both. The text is dry to say the least and often vague or incoherent. For example things are explained in methods such as "assume there 4 processes and no more are coming" well okay there bud. And every other reviewer has said it and I'm going to say it too, the labs are horrible! The objectives are vague the suggestions given are among the most convoluted ways to approach them, and the concepts and skills neccissary and no where to be found in the book.