what is the "jargon" of OSdeving

[earlz]

Is there like a list of all the words and stuff commonly used in os deving(without being obvious..)
for instance IPC, mutex,semaphores.. I have no idea what any of those mean...

[Midas]

IPC is Interprocess Communication - whatever method you use for processes to communicate with each other, for example shared memory.

Mutex is Mutual Exclusion - methods of stopping multiple threads of execution accessing any one given limited resource simulaneously.

Semaphore - means of synchronizing two threads of execution by using a flag indicating whether or not execution can continue (or alternatively status of a resource, allowing decisions to be made based on that).


For a quick definition, "define:keyword" on Google's pretty handy. Plus reading appropriate articles, and particularly these forums, tends to let you pick up a lot of the terms. Perhaps there is a more full glossary tho'. It'd be handy.

[Pype.Clicker]

there are a good amount of these terms that are defined in the FAQ. I'd hardly call them "jargon" though ... there are more like technical terms ... (except if you're using "jargon" for bootstrapping too, of course).

Anyway, if you have some of these terms that aren't covered in the FAQ (http://mega-tokyo.com/osfaq/), feel free to post them so that we can add their definition.

[Schol-R-LEA]

The OS-FAQ has a glossary already, though it does seem rather underused.

[Pype.Clicker]

that's not a glossary per se: that's the category of glossary pages... If we had to make it an extensive glossary, we should extract all definitions, give them their dedicated pages, include the SemaphoreDefinition page in Semaphore page and tag the SemaphoreDefinition page as being from Glossary category.