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Comment by tmalsburg2 | Hacker News Reader

I learned a lot about this from the book "The design of the Unix operating system" by Maurice J. Bach.¹ It's an old book and many details deviate from actual present-day Linux, but it nonetheless gives a great overview of the key components and ideas.

¹ https://books.google.de/books/about/The_Design_of_the_UNIX_O...

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Seems to be available on the Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/DesignUNIXOperatingSystem

This is one of my favorite books. A true classic. There are follow-ups in that style for Linux and FreeBSD as well. I think Robert Love wrote the former.

And Marshall Kirk McKusick wrote the latter, "The Design and Implementation of the FreeBSD Operating System"

I used this book as a primary reference for OS design (along with The Dinosaur Book) when designing my hobby OS.

The FreeBSD kernel/world is almost exquisite in it's engineering simplicity. Compared to the sometimes chaotic world of GNU/Linux (in my experience).

Thanks, pretty sure that's the one I meant.

Thank you! I was going to ask for the latest linux variant - are you speaking of Love's "Linux Kernel Development", or "Linux in a Nutshell"?

I've been a primary linux user for a couple decades now but I'm not too keen on digging into kernel hacking but love details like the OPs post.

The Kernel Development book. It gives a tour. Read the UNIX one first though.

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