Operating System Concepts Sixth Edition
Abraham Silberschatz Peter Baer Galvin Greg Gagne
Operating systems are an essential part of any computer system. Similarly, a course on operating systems is an essential part of any computer-science education. This book is intended as a text for an introductory course in operating systems at the junior or senior undergraduate level, or at the first-year graduate level. It provides a clear description of the concepts that underlie operating systems.
In this book, we do not concentrate on any particular operating system or hardware. Instead, we discuss fundamental concepts that are applicable to a variety of systems. We present a large number of examples that pertain specifically to UNIX and to other popular operating systems. In particular, we use Sun Microsystem's Solaris 2 operating system, a version of UNIX, with support for threads at the kernel and user levels, symmetric multiprocessing, and real-time scheduling. Other examples used include Microsoft MS-DOS, Windows NT, and Windows 2000, Linux, IBM OS/2, the Apple Macintosh Operating System, and DEC VMS and TOPS-20.
We assume only a familiarity with basic data structures, computer organization, and a high-level (C or Java) programming language. Concepts are presented using intuitive descriptions. The fundamental concepts and algorithms covered in the book are often based on those used in existing commercial or experimental operating systems. Our aim is to present these concepts and algorithms in a general setting that is not tied to one particular operating system.
In this Sixth edition of Operating System Concepts, we have retained the overall style of the first five editions, while addressing the evolution of operating systems. Every chapter has been edited, and most have been modified extensively.
The sixth edition retains and improves on the conceptual coverage of previous editions, and seeks to bridge the gap between concepts and actual implementations. Several changes have been made towards this end, including: