From owner-freebsd-questions Tue Jun 5 9:17:58 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from c1456354-a.boise1.id.home.com (c1456354-a.boise1.id.home.com [65.4.107.53]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with SMTP id DE66937B405 for ; Tue, 5 Jun 2001 09:17:55 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from g0rdi@c1456354-a.boise1.id.home.com) Received: (qmail 1167 invoked by uid 500); 5 Jun 2001 16:16:28 -0000 Date: Tue, 5 Jun 2001 10:16:27 -0600 From: jeremy-novak To: GoodleafJ@immunex.com Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: OT question -- Books on OS basics Message-ID: <20010605101627.A1072@c1456354-a.boise1.id.home.com> References: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline User-Agent: Mutt/1.2.5i In-Reply-To: ; from GoodleafJ@immunex.com on Tue, Jun 05, 2001 at 08:27:53AM -0700 Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG On Tue, Jun 05, 2001 at 08:27:53AM -0700, GoodleafJ@immunex.com wrote: > For personal reasons, I'm interested in learning about operating systems > from a theoretical perspective. Here's the thing: > > - I don't have a background in computer science. > - I need something basic. > - Please recommend something if you know of a good book(s). > > I'm prepared to accept the possibility that there is no basic book on > operating systems accessible to a reasonably computer-saavy person with no > CS background. In this case, can you suggest an intro to CS that might give > me a background from which to proceed? > > In short, I'd like to get up to speed, and I'm willing to do any amount of > reading; I just want the shortest path first, so to speak. > > Thanks for your time, > John Hi John Unfortunately I really don't know what single book covers this topic. This very topic is a two years of coursework at my university. And honesstly I really don't know a whole lot about Micro$oft, haven't played with it for a couple of years. I can tell you that 'The Complete FreeBSD' by Greg Lehey and published by Walnut Creek CDROM Books http://www.cdrom.com/ is the best starter book for anything in the *nix category. It covers some history, comparitive differences between *nix and MS structure/commands, easy to understand chapters on all key phases of running the OS. If you are just looking for a book that will not bruise the brain too much, yet be very educational and have the ability to intelligently compare the 'popular' OS's, this is 'the' book. But be carefull john. I did some similar research in 96'-97', and I got toatally hooked. Today I don't own one single piece of M$ software. To quote 'a famous greek phillosopher' - "Once the mind is stretched by new ideas, it can never re-take it's former shape". I 'was' a junior year finance major who willing and ready, threw it all away to become a C.S. major. Jeremy To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message