Operating Systems Design and Implementation (3rd Edition)

1.6. Outline of the Rest of This Book

Operating systems typically have four major components: process management, I/O device management, memory management, and file management. MINIX 3 is also divided into these four parts. The next four chapters deal with these four topics, one topic per chapter. Chapter 6 is a list of suggested readings and a bibliography.

The chapters on processes, I/O, memory management, and file systems have the same general structure. First the general principles of the subject are laid out. Then comes an overview of the corresponding area of MINIX 3 (which also applies to UNIX). Finally, the MINIX 3 implementation is discussed in detail. The implementation section may be skimmed or skipped without loss of continuity by readers just interested in the principles of operating systems and not interested in the MINIX 3 code. Readers who are interested in finding out how a real operating system (MINIX 3) works should read all the sections.