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Rating: 
Summary: Overview only ...
Review: I am actually happy with this book. Why do I give this book 3 stars then? Well, I am happy with this book because I only look for an overview of distributed operating systems. This book has a very good overview of some modern operating systems: Chorus, Amoeba, Windows2000. It also covers COM-CORBA middleware. In summary this book is appropriate as a roadmap to elaborate further about the field...But..., they are all really only overview, and the book price is too much for an overview book. If only the book costs 2/3 maybe I would give 4 stars for this book. It costs almost the same with Jim Gray's book (that is much much more detail...). I have also found numerous typos in this book, which are very irritating... Prentice-Hall does really need a better editor. I don't give the book 2 stars because it keeps itself informed about the newest technology in the field, and that's the strong point for this book. Another strong point: the writer tries to make humour...
Rating: 
Summary: Clear and Practical in a Computer System Book! Bravo!
Review: Let me tell you, I bought this book after seeing the author speak at N+I in Las Vegas and boy am I glad I did. Refreshingly different, it was not only clear and to the point but practical as well. It was easy to tell Galli has been there and done it and it really helped me get it. Some books are so fluffy and try to bury you in useless theory without relating it to what we need to know when we design and develop real systems in the Internet space. Not this one. As a bonus, the glossary and acronym list was quite helpful since I didn't have to figure out where the word was defined when I jumped to a topic using the index. Great for spot reading. On a school note, I took a course for my M.S. that used the Tanenbaum book. This overall was much more helpful. Actually some of my classmates couldn't figure out why I knew what was going on in class so quickly. I would say, scrap the class book and grab this one. Sure there are some typos as people mentioned in their reviews but at least the material can readily be understood. If only other computer authors could be understood this easily. JMHO.
Rating:
Summary: Helped me land!
Review: Let's face it ... the IT market is near the bottom. A colleague (or should I say former colleague) handed me this book to 'freshen' up before that all important interview. It was quick and easy to read and helped me put some meat behind what I had been doing as well as articulate and formalize my knowledge. I think this is exactly what gave me the edge in the interviews (endless rounds of interviews). Now I not only landed but went from a senior engineer to a chief architect with a bump in pay. I just grabbed a copy for myself as I'm sure this is one book I will be referring to quite often. All in all - content wise I'd highly recommend this book. On the part of editing - well - not the best but the content is what I needed and got. RW
Chief Architect
Rating: 
Summary: Lots of buzzwords and names but no analogies!
Review: The matter is too abstract like a technical paper. The author would have spent more time on providing the concepts in detail rather than giving some code. Difficult for students who have average knowledge in operating systems. Buy this book if you want some programming details.
Rating:
Summary: Very brief and abstract...
Review: The matter is too abstract like a technical paper. The author would have spent more time on providing the concepts in detail rather than giving some code. Difficult for students who have average knowledge in operating systems. Buy this book if you want some programming details.
Rating: 
Summary: An important contribution to distributed computing
Review: The objective of the book is to cover major aspects of distributed operating systems from a conceptual and practical viewpoint. The book introduces basic networking concepts, considers popular interconnection networks for parallel and distributed systems, explains the architectural concepts related to kernels, processes and threads, process management and scheduling, and different techniques for interprocess communication (such as pipes, Internet sockets, and RPC). The emphasis is on such fundamental topics of distributed systems (DS) as concurrency control, distributed file processing, transaction management, consistency models, distributed process management, and distributed synchronization. Due attention is paid to object-based systems and middleware(Amoeba, Clouds, Chorus, DCOM, CORBA). Of a special interest is the case-study chapter on Windows 2000 OS which is designed to provide a broad spectrum of services for the development and implementation of DSs and which is claimed to become one of the technological milestones in the new millenium. Written in a clear and technically sound language, without unnecessary details, the book is primarily for teaching the subject at the senior undergraduate and first graduate levels. A student will not be overloaded by formal aspects and annoying theoretical considerations. Instead, he is offered a very well organized text, with simple yet highly informative figures, a mass of quite relevant exercises and project topics. The book includes accurately classified and commented references for further study which is especially important for practitioners wishing to get more deep understanding of the topics. This is definitely the text that should be used by all those who want to seriously start working in the fascinating field of distributed computing.
Rating: 
Summary: Riddled with errors
Review: The text generally gives an adequate explanation of distributed system concepts. However, the number of technical and typographic errors make this an incredibly poor textbook. It does not appear that anyone reviewed the book for content or accuracy prior to publication. It is definitely not worth the price.
Rating:
Summary: Lots of buzzwords and names but no analogies!
Review: The trouble with a book like this is that it expects you to just know, somehow, perhaps by intuition, what a term or name means. Really good authors like Andrew Tanenbaum relate the concepts to each other gradually, and to real world ideas. This is what I mean that Galli's book has no analogies. "This is like this, but not like this..." After reading just a few paragraphs, my head is swimming with undefined names and unresolved references. The end result is utter frustration and no deep understanding of anything. This book looks good but looks are SOOOOO deceiving! Don't waste your time with it.
Rating:
Summary: Highly Recommended...
Review: This book has all the right material (and more). I found the topics to be presented in a straightforward and easy to understand manner just as most here have said. There's even a glossary and a list of acronyms provided which is a helpful tool. What else could you want? I would highly recommend checking this one out. Oh, and the couple naysay blurbs here are nonsensical as this has got to be one of the best books in its class.
Rating:
Summary: STAY AWAY....Poorly edited and very terse
Review: While this book covers a lot of the areas pertaining to distributed OSes, it is very tersely worded and I have to wonder what monkey edited it. At least 1/2 of the pages contain grammatical errors. Figures are also stunningly frequently mislabeled. There is no way anyone should use this book until these errors are fixed for either a text or their own information. Contentwise, the book assumes that you remember everything from your basic OS class, it doesn't explain ANYTHING that would normally be covered by a more basic OS book. This doesn't cut the mustard because not every professor covers every topic relating to normal OSes in Intro to OS(also, this book may be used at the masters level where it is possible that its been 10 years since the student has taken intro to os). It may be ok for a quickie reference into possible algorithms, but as an actual learning guide it stinks. Sadly, I can't give this 0 stars.
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