Lions' Commentary on Unix

You can read all the textbooks you want (and there are some pretty good ones out their like the terse one by Lister and the more expansive one by Tannenbaum) but there is not substitute for reading code. The two advantages of Version 6 are (1) it is small enough to be fully read and comprehended as a whole, (2) the code quality is first rate, and (3) the code was not written by a vast community but by a pair of outstanding computer scientists and therefor is stylistically and philosophically consistent. [OK, off by one error, so what?] What is fantastic about this package though is that Lions' commentary saves the reader so much time by making the code rapidly understandable. Naturally there is no "royal road" to 10,000 lines of code, and this does involve significant work. But it is so worth it. Even though it's now 50 years old.

I sincerely wish I'd had a copy of Lions' commentary on UNIX when I was at college. Not only is it a thorough and fascinating commentary on a very important codebase, but it is also littered with valuable insight into the effective construction of a substantial, significant, but not overwhelming codebase.While the UNIX/Linux codebase has moved on significantly, even today, Linos' work is is a fascinating read and, in many ways, more interesting and entertaining to read than Tannenbaum's Minix textbook.

Only quibble is with the stupid non-li-flat binding, and the 'sideways' printing format.Otherwise, a worthwhile historical artifact and a large, tasty breadcrumb along the Unix-Fu GrokTrail :-)

I learned about the existence of this manuscript 16 years ago, yet could never find a full version, until the book came. I have read most of it and it is beatiful. Many of the tradeoffs the early UNIX versions had are there. Context switching is done via coroutine jumps, the callout table is used only for the teletype, the very origins of the scheduler and swapper are neatly explained among many other things. PDP11 architecture is simple enough to make this book still a jewel for those interested in learning OS concepts and evolution and specifically UNIX.

This is a great book. I used it in 1978 when I first used UNIX. Now I use it to understand UNIX/LINUX internals.

"Lions' Commentary on Unix" by John LionsMy nephew the math whiz,specifically requested it for Christmas and absolutley devoured it! Amazon was the only place I could find it. He opened it and started reading while the rest of us continued opening the rest of our gifts! He has already finished it. Thanks!

I have been working with Unix for more than 5 years, and read more than 20 books about unix itself. But I never seend book like this much well explain about internal architecture. Unix 6 on PDP-11 is old, but main idea still remain all major distribution.It great helpful for my understanding about Unix.

Excellent detailed information unavailable anywhere else.

One of the best books about OS and general C programming intrinsics; contains valuable knowledge and pieces of history that lead to better understanding of modern stuff as well.

This is a book like no others. It is exciting to scan through the lines of the original UNIX source code, see the comments and study how some stuff got implemented. It is both instructive and insightful.Lions' comments are a great source of learning. A must-read.

This is a superb book. well written with some really good insights into the why-and-how of the original UNIX source code. One of the great resources you will need if you study the design and operation of good operating systems. I highly reccommend this book. along with someof the Tanenbaum books.

I bought this book because I saw a presentation about the importance for a developer to read good code and this was one of the examples that the presenter gave.It is interesting that it contains the sources for a complete operating system written in only 9000 lines of code. It is small enough for you to grasp.

I'm super happy with the book, everything arrived perfectly and the book was in very good condition as described. Super recommended!