Read Linux Kernel Development 3rd Edition Robert Love Books

Product details Paperback 480 pages Publisher Addison-Wesley Professional; 3 edition (July 2, 2010) Language English ISBN-10 0672329468

Linux Kernel Development 3rd Edition Robert Love Books Reviews

• This is the best book in my opinion for learning about the kernel! Even if you are doing driver development or just embedded system work, I highly recommend this as the text for learning the linux kernel. It goes over the scheduler, how processes are represented, memory management, devices, system calls, and many kernel data structures. Each topic is covered quite well with relevant CODE and information. Very straight-forward. He does an amazing job of explaining the modular structure of kernel and how most things are implemented as modules / pseudo-objects.
  
  Really gives the tools you need to know to be an effective developer. This book helps me understand the dryer, wordier, less clear, out-of-date, Linux Device Drivers. Full disclosure have not completely finished reading the book, but I am more than a third the way through!
• I was shopping for a good overview reference book of the Linux kernel, I did not want too much depth into each component, what I wanted was a "brief" overview of all the different components. If you're looking for depth into each module, then this is not the book for you. If you're interested in Linux and want a good overview book that you can finish quickly and have a working knowledge of the different components and how they tie in together then this is a great piece. I think "Linux Device Drivers" by Corbet is a better reference if your interest is strictly device driver and "Understanding Linux Networking Internals" by Benvenuti is better if you want to know more about the IP stack. Overall Robert Love goes through kernel development at a great level for an overview with just enough depth and enough examples. I use the book not every day but I often have it on my desk for reference.
• I wish I had this book when I was going through my Operating Systems undergrad class, or any time after that, but I'm glad I finally discovered it. It clears up so much about Linux that is usually just glossed over in a lot of other documentation. It goes into enough depth to make diving into kernel-level or system-level code less overwhelming.
• It's like having an expert whispering the answers to me.
  
  I favor books. Books are often rigorously peer reviewed, coherent, well indexed, useful both as a reader and a reference.
  
  1. Covers the material
  2. Presented in an organized and meaningful way
  3. Coherent
  4. Thorough
  5. Indexed (indexed expertly - I can find the desired answer quickly)
• Good and simple explanation of linux kernel. Good place to start if you want to understand how linux kernel works and start working on it. The only downside it's sometimes boring to read about all structures - but I guess it's because my intention was to understand concepts behind it not to fork and make changes.
• This book is a great book, but it has a limited scope. So it is not a programmers reference, and it should not be bought with that in mind.
  
  However, this is a great high level discussion of the kernel and its implementation. And what really makes it great is the fact that you realize that Love know his stuff and he has a great writing style.
  
  He does cover the major system components with a great high level description, and more important, he gives a great analysis of issues, both design and some implementation. His overview of the CFS is the best of any I have seen. And this can be repeated most topics he covers in this book.
  
  The index is excellent.
  
  After reading this book I would love to go to a seminar given by Love. His presentation skills are probably better than his writing skills.
• About one year ago I was browsing the univerity book store, not really knowing what I was looking for. Being all fed up with math thesis stuff I was certain that I wanted somthing practical and funny to read. By chance I saw a book called "Linux Kernel Development". At first I did not give it much attention because normaly writing kernel code does not make me relax at all. When I was leaving the book store, curiosity took over and I decided to find out who the author was - expecting to see some no name punk I was really surprised that it was Robert Love, known of much programming fame in the kernel community. Naturaly I bought the book, read it in 2 days and I loved it. Here for the first time was a book that precendet the art of kernel programming in an easy, understandebel and about all funny way. This was 2004, last week I discovered that a second edtion was out. I quickly bought it on and while I loved the first edition I must admit that this one is even better.
  
  Robert takes you gently but thoroughly through most of the facets of kernel programming, including system call registration, coding guidelines, synchronization and the VM layer. This is a great book which while being short and precise still manages to get you hacking on the kernel without suffering two much headache. The only thing I feel is missing is a chapter or two devoted to debugging the kernel - but in that regard one could also pickup "Linux(R) Debugging and Performance Tuning " by Steve Best which is a complete book on the fine art of bug/bottleneck hunting. Anyway this is one of the best written tech book I have ever had the joy of reading and it fully deserves to be put next to computer science classics such as "Introduction to Algorithms" and "The C Programming Language".