What are some good sources to study Operating System concepts? Follow

The best way to learn about any operating system is by using them. But, you might not have access to all of these systems and in that case, you need to go online to learn about them. There are many sources and not all of them are free. One good place to start is the Java Point website. 

On this page, you will get everything you need to prepare for your GATE exam. All concepts mentioned here are explained in great detail, filled with examples, figures and more. There is even a practice session developed using the previous year's GATE exam question papers. 

The website could help you study for the exam giving you a clear understanding of concepts as nothing could replace the original texts as studied by software development professionals. A popular option is a book called ‘Operating System Concepts’ by Avi Silberschatz and Greg Gagne. This covers the very basics starting with the structures, processes, memory, storage and the protection of these modules. 

If you can't find this book, look for William Stalling’s ‘Operating Systems’ that lists out several common and complex OS problems and ways to solve them. It covers design issues seen in contemporary and distributed systems, like SMP, threads, multiprocessor scheduling, microkernels, security, and clusters. Each chapter takes a look at all of these topics individually, covering the fundamentals and goes onto how they can be applied to the system at large. Start with his website of the same name, which lists out all of Stallings publications and where you can buy them.  

The next one is the ‘Modern Operating Systems’ by Andrew S. Tanenbaum that explains a lot about systems as we know them today. It even describes popular issues like deadlocks, software synchronizations and more. This same author has another publication called ‘Operating Systems- Design and Implementation that is largely about Minix code and memory management.