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Comment by dcchambers | Hacker News Reader

I had Remzi for two courses at UW, one of them being Operating Systems. He's the best professor I've ever had, and this book is an amazing tool for learning the basics of an Operating System. It's a quick read, and I would recommend it to anyone looking for a free Intro to OS resource.

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Same, easily my favorite professor. We were one of the first classes to use the book (he was still writing it), and it's been a godsend. I've nailed every OS-related interview question and use a bunch of the concepts daily.

4 years after I took the course I ran into him at an event at Google, and he remembered me without pause. Really a great guy.

Remzi gets bashful hearing this kind of praise, but I'll pile on. He's had a profound effect on me in the classroom and as a mentor. A lot of you probably use techniques Andrea and Remzi were directly involved in advancing -- MapReduce, in-FS checksumming, etc etc.

This book was already the the core of the intro OS class when I took it several years ago; it's only gotten better and more complete since then.

> I would recommend it to anyone looking for a free Intro to OS resource.

Can you say how it compares to Tanenbaum's 'Modern Operating Systems'?

I haven't read more than a few bits of Tanenbaum's book so I can't give a direct comparison, sorry.

Sadly, I didn't have Remzi at UW although I heard he was a great professor. Our OS class used his book and I'd vouch for it in a heartbeat. Worth a read if you want digestible CS. I remember being most interested in the 'free' part as a broke college kid, but it turned out to be one of my favorite CS books.

I'm in the Operating System class right now for my CS degree and thought I might look into some alternative resources to supplement the class material. This looks super useful, thanks for the recommendation!

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