Visual overview of an operating system?

[WechtleinUns]

Hi. I was wondering if there any flowchart-type visual methods I can use to represent an overview of an operating system kernel. I think it would be a great help in wrapping my head around all the parts of an operating system and how they intereact. As it stands, I can only wrap my head around the parts individually, but that'll never do.

Any suggestions?

[tantrikwizard]

nearly every OS will be different and the details of such a graph will vary depending on the granularity of such a graph. Try Tanenbaum's book

[WechtleinUns]

Which book is that? Title? His full name?

Sorry. I'm self taught, but I don't know very much about tanenbaum.

[tantrikwizard]

spend about 10 seconds doing a search.

http://forum.osdev.org/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=6989

[WechtleinUns]

Cool. Excellent!

[Love4Boobies]

Andrew S. Tanenbaum is a highly respected profesor at the Vrije University, in Amsterdam. He is most noted for his work on MINIX, a UNIX clone microkernel after which Linux was inspired. His books on OSDev include Modern Operating Systems 3/E (which I highly recommend, as it provides very good information and is very up-to-date) and Operating Systems: Design and Implementation 3/E (which gives only some of the information in the other book but explains how everything was put together in MINIX 3 - source code included), co-authored with Albert S. Woodhull.

There are a few online courses that you might be interested in. Berkeley's CS162 is one of them - they also provide webcasts that you may either view online (streaming) or download. The links I gave you are from last fall's term, but the new one is comming up this spring and they will upload the new material there. An alternative is MIT's 6.828, but they are from 2006 and there are no webcasts. Good material, nonetheless. Enjoy!

Regards,
L4B

[kasper]

Hi,

Do you want to represent an overview of your own OS? If so, then UML might be what you want.

[Love4Boobies]

I'm not sure what to say... Such illustrations are very design-speicifc. Perhaps we could add some generic examples on the wiki or something...

[01000101]

I've honestly never taken anything useful from those diagrams.
They are way to design specific and there is really no way to generalize them.

I'd opt for a step-by-step overview of how an OS should work over a pictorial of it any day.

[Love4Boobies]

@Mods: I think this should be in the OSDev Wiki forum...

[JackScott]

For my own operating system design (a microkernel), I have always imagined it as a pond or dam of water (which becomes the microkernel), and processes as lily pads and flowers on top of the water. In my system (and other microkernels, I guess), these processes can be arranged in any order that is necessary, just like lily pads. Any of them can communicate with any other through the microkernel, so they are just sort of 'floating' above it.

[Love4Boobies]

You are sick

[Combuster]

I think its a good metaphor

[paxcoder]

I'm not sure what to say... Such illustrations are very design-speicifc.

What I mean is, actually illustrate different design approaches to operating systems.

@Love4Boobies: It's not like there's hundreds of distinct designs (and this time I'm even counting exokernels etc as specific designs, although they are not). I think some visual generalization to the few of the existent wiki pages would be cool.

@berkus: but what would make even more sense (imho) is to open a topic - such as the "your OS' screenshot" one - so everyone could explain and provide a graphic interpretation of design they have chosen (such as said graph, mind map, ponds with lily pads etc). BTW: If you are to open it yourself, please put "and graphic interpretation" or similar into the title, so the people would actually post images rather than just blabber.

Wha'd'ya guys think?

[Love4Boobies]

I think some visual generalization to the few of the existent wiki pages would be cool.

It's not about being cool, it's about being helpful. Any of these designs could be explained just as well, if not better, in a few words. I'm not sure these drawings actually help anyone, although they might be "nice representations", so IMO it'd be a waste of time, but that's just me