operating system

Simple Real-time Operating System: A Kernel Inside View for a Beginner
$30.50
There is some nice info in this book, but lots of the text you can get for free by downloading technical doc's from ARM. The grammer is very rough. Sometimes you really have to struggle to try to guess what the author is trying to say. Sometimes I just gave up and pressed on. I would not recommend this book, especially to anyone who hadn't already read other books on RTOS's, or tried to write their own RTOS.

Ubuntu Linux Complete Edition 8.04
$19.99
I've watched with interest at the O/S's development. I've also had a lot of frustration trying to get many of the functions to work especially multi-media.

After upgrading to Ubuntu 9.04 I think, I hope and I have my fingers crossed that Linux (Ubuntu) has finally crossed over to an O/S that almost anyone can install on there computer almost as easy as MicroSuck's Windoze O/S (anyone who has tried to install MSuck O/S knows it can be a real pain).

Every device I plugged in including a USB floppy drive, a Seagate external hard drive, two mice, and a HP all-in-one printer that is only a few months old were immediately detected and the modules loaded perfectly. The only thing that didn't come off perfectly was the graphics acceleration software I needed for my NVidea 8800 GT graphics card. I had an SLI set-up, but evidently the Xorg config file couldn't cope with the two cards and X11 kept crashing until I pulled one of them and then the graphics acceleration module that the Ubuntu developers put together worked perfectly.

The time it takes Ubuntu to start up makes MSuck O/S look like a snail. Same with the speed of opening programs 'cause there isn't all those so called extensions dragging down the system resources.

The only complaint I have now, and the only thing I can't do that I could with MSuck is watch instant movies on netflix.com, but this isn't Linux's (Ubuntu) fault. It's netflix.com and I let them know about it.

The circle is complete . . . Linux is ready for prime time.

Oh ya . . . the complaint about only one CD in this edition . . . Debian's complete iso collection is 4 4.8Gb DVD's. Ya can install Ubuntu in 20 minutes, then use the add/remove program utility to download any other program you want from the almost unlimited collection of FREE packages on their repositories, thousands of programs that MicroSuck would scam you hundreds of dollars for. Ubuntu also instantly reminds you of security updates.

Linux (Ubuntu) based on Unix which was designed specifically with security in mind makes all the Linux distro's extremely virus and malware resistant, and some computer technically savy users simply do not use a firewall, anti-virus or malware program. I don't recommend this but there are free solutions to this too like Avast! anti-virus, one of the most highly rated on the market, for free home use with Linux. And there are free firewalls too.

Look . . . if you are a newbie to computers you will have to ask someone to install and configure MicroSuck's Bigtime XP or Vista anyway. You might as well buy this O/S for $20 measly bucks and then ask someone to help you install it, AND then you don't have to get it from behind by purchasing Microsoft Office Professional 2007, and all their other sucky stuff for $365.99 (amazon.com price). Heck, OpenOffice, the equivalent of Microsoft Office Professional 2007 is FREE man. What are you waiting for.

I didn't give it five stars because it didn't detect my NVidia SLI graphics card set up, and I had to download some codecs to get my DVD video players to work (they couldn't include the codecs for some legal BS reason), and ya basically cannot play very many high end games on it (that's what I use computers for 90% of the time) unless ya use Wine which is still in the development stage and ya need a lot of work to get bleeding edge games to work.

Design of the UNIX Operating System
$73.33
This book is for anyone who wants to know what happens "under the hood" in a UNIX based operating system. I especially like the pseudocode given for various system calls and other important kernel functions. The exercises given at the end of chapters are thought provoking. This book is not about how to learn/work in UNIX. Some of the topics such as streams may not be relevant in some of the current implementations of UNIX (or clones of UNIX), but most of the book is still relevant.

Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium Upgrade
$119.99
Windows 7 i thought was going to be what we where all waiting for! Well nothing works with it! All the programs that worked with Vista u will be surprised dont work with 7. I wish i never updated from Vista to 7. Believe me I never will again! I will just wait till i need a new computer before i EVER buy a MS upgrade again!