General Description
Vsevolod Demkin's “Operating Systems” is a set of lecture notes dedicated to the fundamental principles of operating system construction and operation. The material is presented in a lecture format and covers both the basic theoretical foundations and the architectural aspects of modern OSes.
The book examines the place of the operating system within the structure of a computing system: from interaction with the hardware to its role as an interface between the user and application programs. It thoroughly analyzes the operating system kernel, the user environment, the mechanisms for managing processes and threads, resource allocation, and the principles of isolation.
Separate chapters are devoted to memory management (including virtual memory), file systems, interrupts, system calls, and interaction with I/O devices. It explains the issues of multitasking, process scheduling, synchronization, and deadlocks. It also touches upon topics such as processor architecture, abstraction levels, and the connection between the OS and the hardware platform.
The structure of the book assumes a sequential study of the material: from general concepts to more technically complex sections. This is not a popular exposition, but rather an academic course aimed at forming a systemic understanding of how computing systems are organized at the operating environment level.
The notes can serve both as a basic introduction to the discipline and as supplementary material for students in technical fields studying computer architecture and system programming.
Opinion
Generally speaking, this isn't even a book, but a set of lecture notes. From the title, it's quite clear what it will be about: operating systems, their main components, types of memory, and much more. It's only because I had a full-fledged “Operating Systems” course in college (or was it university?) that the material didn't seem difficult. However, for beginners, this can be a quite challenging book (set of notes).
