Rating: 
Summary: No where near
Review: A poor attempt to redo lions work on Unix. This book is only source code in a printed format. The commentary is very week and the cross references are pathetic.If you are looking for the same level of expertise that lions gives you, I would never recommend this book.
Rating: 
Summary: Fantastic! Wish I had bought this sooner!
Review: Am very impressed with its valuable content and liken it to Peter Norton's mid-80's computer books in that it is pleasurable to read while serving up the information I need. Unlike many of my other computer books which I now use as drink coasters, this text is shelved safely on my desk. I grab at it often as a reference. An excellent book. I look forward to further efforts by the author.
Rating:
Summary: = * * * * *
Review: I am reviewing the 2nd edition of this book, which talks about the 2.4.x kernels. This book is unusual in that a lot of it is just the Linux kernel source code; I was only interested in the content from the author, which is roughly the equivalent of a 250 page book. Having the source code as one monolithic printout is nice because the author can put a pointer to the code from the text rather than having to put a zillion code snippets inline with the text; I rarely read code snippets anyway. In this book I wanted to read about: what is the high level architecture of the kernel; what are the design details of its "core" elements; for each element, what are the key data structures and functions in its implementation; what are some examples of the use of those functions and data structures. For what I wanted, I think this book is great. I would not hesitate to compare it to the outstanding "Linux Device Drivers" and "Understanding the Linux Kernel" books. I don't know of any comparably high quality sources of this kind of information right now (it is December 2001), except for the also excellent "Linux 2.4 Kernel Internals" guide by Tigran Aivazian. For someone looking to see good documentation for a particular file in the kernel source code, I would say don't assume you are going to find it in this book. This book covers _some_ of the source. Also, it does not teach you how to interact with the kernel by writing network drivers, filesystem drivers, hardware device drivers, etc.
Rating:
Summary: Babbling
Review: I completely subscribe by the long list of this book's shortcomings mentioned by the previous reviewers (total lack of coverage for the IP stack, for one), however the one thing that gives me the most heartburn is the total and blind adoration that the author displays for his subject. Obviously, this is the only OS kernel that Mr.Maxwell is familiar with, thus he has no reference point for comparison (I would suggest NetBSD). The source code that I am looking at, deserves lots and lots of critique, to put it mildly!
Rating: 
Summary: Interesting for ones own education
Review: I've found this book somewhat usefull. It does a firly good job of explaining the various features and services available inside the linux kernel. The source code is used as an aid to explinations of services, but is incomplete, and so is somewhat lacking as complete reference.
Rating: 
Summary: The right book for the right purpose
Review: The book is *extremely* useful for understanding the linux kernel operation, when away from your terminal. Although I agree with some of the nit-picks in the reviews below (and have a few of my own) I would not give the book a *bad* review. Yes, it follows the format of the John Lions "Commentary On UNIX 6th Edition", showing the source code (with line numbers) first, followed by in depth commentary (with references to line numbers). An extremely good format. Too bad they missed some aspects of the Lions format, such as cross reference tables, and using a fixed number of lines per page. The source code is easily 2/3's of the book. However, it's necessarily included to a) let the source speak for itself as much as possible, and b) to freeze the code for the annotated cross references, since the linux source is in constant flux. Organizationally the book is missing a few things. In fact, frustratingly so because they could have made many things easier if they'd only followed the wisdom of the Lions book; 1) A line number/subroutine/filename cross reference table. This is an *important* aspect of the original Lions. 2) It would be nice if the line numbers had anything to do with the page numbers, since the line numbers aren't a fixed number per-page (In Lions there were 50 lines per page, so it was easy to scan for line numbers by flipping pages; 4500, 4550.. the linux book numbers jump all over; 13211, 13403.. yuck!) 3) Each page should have a title at the top indicating which file is being listed. Again, see Lions..! As it is, you have to flip all around looking for section headings, which incidentally appear in random positions on pages. 4) Someone should have taken the trouble to embolden function headings. It's important to identify the start of subroutine headings. The Lions book didn't need this because the AT&T code was easier to determine function headings due to their commenting style Regardless, the Linux book is very handy for studying the kernel in an offline manner. They should've done a little more for the reader, though. But thankfully, the source speaks for itself. The kernel version is 2.2.5; it says so in the Introduction on page xv. Granted, it doesn't say it on the cover, it probably should :/ Also, this book is intended for core kernel (scheduling, processes, filesystem), not for device drivers. DD's would be nice, but in a whole different book! I don't fault them for that. Certainly a hyperlinked version of the source on the CD would've been nice. However, I did get one hell of a kick out of the oldest version of the linux code on the CD as well as the current; a pleasant surprise for me, esp. in the context of this book! Very revealing about how the kernel developed. I hope in the second edition, the authors take our comments into account.
Rating:
Summary: Well done (with reservations)
Review: There have been criticisms of this book. I tend to agree with aome of them. On the other hand, it met my needs. It is very clear and helpful about how the kernel works. It is especially clear about how memory management works. I guess my summary is that I am very pleased with my purchase.
Rating:
Summary: Useful for some purposes
Review: This is a book that may prove useful to some. It contains a chunk of the Linux kernel source code in printed form and some commentary on the code. It has been pointed out that one can get the kernel code for free very easily. This is true. However, the commentary does add some value to this book, as there are some valuable explanations of some interesting areas of the Linux kernel. My favorite is the chapter on kernel memory management, which includes a nice explanation of the conditions that trigger the fearsome Segmentation Fault.
The commentary in this book is sketchy in places and is focused on the x86 architecture where processor architecture matters. I found that the commentary was fairly useful overall and therefore I could justify the price of the book. I also appreciate, as another reviewer mentioned, the nicely bound hardcopy of the source code so that I can thumb it without being in front of my computer.
Thus, I would recommend this book to people who would like to: a) learn more about how Linux works, b) speak fluent C, and c) feel they need a bit more information than the kernel comments and documentation provide in order to really understand the code. This is not a book for novice programmers! This is not a book for Uber-Hackers, either. This is a book for in-between types, like myself (I have three years professional experience and have been casually fiddling with computers for more than ten years).
Rating: 
Summary: Not what you want
Review: This is probably the book that you don't want, if what you want is to know about the internals of Linux, this book is not the accurate for it, first of all, in Amazon.com you see that they say that the book is like 500 pages long, well, that's true, only that almost 400 pages are code, and not new code, all code, corresponding to the 2.2.14 kernel, and the latest stable release of the kernel is is 2.4.8. All the information that you need about the linux kernel can be easy obteined reading freely available information on the Internet,... Anyway, if you really want to learn about the linux kernel buying this book is not going to get you one step closer.
Rating:
Summary: Diversity of responses
Review: While the reviews for this book vary greatly, for my purposes I have found it to be a useful tool and reference guide. I look forward to future addtions.
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