OSDev.org

welcome back, gosh!

've missed your posts for they are smooth to read and full of information.

Good luck with the job hunting.

I'm going to repeat a pair of recommendations that I'd posted some time back, but which accidentally got deleted. They are not specifically about OS programming; however, anyopne who is designing an OS would do well to read them both.

The Design of Everyday Things by Donald A. Norman. I'm going to be very clear and blunt on this subject: if you haven't read this book, you have no business designing anything which any other human being will need to use. Period.

While not specifically about computers, this book goes a long way in explaining the way people intereact with the world around them (the original title was The Psychology of Everyday Things), and provides a basic overview of user design which is universal. While brief, the section on computer UIs is wonderfully enlightening; the two concepts of the Gulf of Execution (the degree to which the set of possible actions is visible to a user) and the Gulf of Evaluation (the amount of feedback the user gets when an action is taken) goes a long way in explaining what it really means for a design to be 'user-friendly'.

The Humane Interface by Jef Raskin. Whereas DOET is a general guide to useability, THI is a manifesto about how computer UIs can and should be redesigned, to the benefit of novices and masters alike. Raskin was the original design lead on the Macintosh, and left the project when he concluded it was getting to complex; this was the original 128K Mac, mind you. He later went on to design the Canon Cat, an obscure but widely lauded design which is considered by those who know of it to be a triumph of simplicity, and a superior system to many that came later. The book goes to great lengths to explain just why the systems currently in use never seem to live up to their potential. THI has some serious flaws - Raskin has a lot of trouble explaining some of his better ideas (a lot of people interpret the idea of type-and-select actions as championing CLIs over GUIs, which is not the case at all), and much of the book is stuffily academic in tone - but still quite valuable and inspiring.

In addition to the two recommendations above, I'd like to mention two hard-to-find but highly inspiring classics: Computer Lib/Dream Machines and Literary Machines both by visionary Ted Nelson. While both are rather old right now (especially the original 1974 edition of CL/DM), they are in many ways still ahead of their time.

The curious might want to check out this interesting review of the 1987 edition of CL/DM from a 1996 perspective, or else look into the various sites relating to the (ongoing) Xanadu Project, including the Xanadu Cyberarcheology Project and the Udanax open source release of the older code (as well as Abora, a partial re-implementation of U.Gold).

I recently bought the latest stallings book "Organisation et architecture de l'ordinateur, 6th Edition", and i must admit that it looks pretty impressive.

That's the usual book on computer architecture, but this one presents the latest techniques like FireWire or PCI bus (rather than the usual ISA stuff), and also PowerPC G4 architecture, IA-64, etc. More to come when i'll have actually read it ...

Turbo Pascal Internals (Developer's Series) by Tischer?
This book has real-address mode information and programming tips. Interesting section on multitasking using the 8088. TSR programming, ect.

Tim Robinson wrote:

Schol-R-LEA wrote:I'm going to be very clear and blunt on this subject: if you haven't read this book, you have no business designing anything which any other human being will need to use. Period.

I agree with you 100% on that. Reading this book was truly enlightening.

What book was this?

The Design of Everyday Things by Donald A. Norman. The original review was deleted from the forum by mistake; I've since posted another review of it, above.

I need a book which covers IPC design detailed!

Anyone here who knows a good book for me?!

Here are old books (1973, 1988) that you may find through your library or an inter-library loan...

Operating Systems - Communicating with and Controlling the Computer by Laurie S. Keller ISBN: 0-13-638040-9
Good book describing the basics of OS design including coverage of CP/M, MS-DOS, VM/SP, and Unix.

Operating System Principles by Per Brinch Hansen ISBN: 0-13-637843-9
Very good (old) OS theory book that still holds valuable information on multi-programming/tasking, multi-user systems.

The good old Minix book, either first or second edition. I love this book!

UNIX Internals: The New Frontiers
by Uresh Vahalia

http://www.amazon.com/gp/.....

Practical File System Design with the Be File System has been made freely available as a PDF.

A full copy of TCP/IP Illustrated also seems to be available online.

There is another two books that should be pointed out. They mostly concern os theory, but very useful in my opinion.

1. Concepts and Implementation of Microkernels For Embedded Systems by Dr. Jurgen Sauermann, Melanie Thelen - a rather small book presenting implementation of a microkernel in C++ for MC68020 processor.

2. Operating Systems Concepts - 6th Edition by Abraham Silberschatz, Peter Baer Galvin (ISBN 0-471-25060-0) - Explains almost every aspect of os development. Also has great chapters providing in deep look into some existing, mature, kernels.

What about the Amiga Archetecture, what books are there available for that for the OS writer? Or where to look for information.

thanks

srg

Hmm ... may i remind that this thread is intended to receive recommandations about technical books for OSDev'ing. Sure we love to know who's your favourite character in LOTR or which volume of Harry Potter you preferred too, but that's for another board. Tnx

At amazon there is a deal for 2 books including Operating Systems: Design and Implementation and Modern Operating Systems. should i get them?