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#1 2013-03-22 16:35:45

MatRoo
Member
Registered: 2013-03-22
Posts: 6

[Solved] Worth buying the book? Linux Kernel Internals

Dear Arch Community,

Yesterday I succesfully installed arch on my old laptop for testing purposes, and it's been great.

But I find that I simply lack a tad of knowledge about the internals (seeing I want to work towards LFS, and I'm comming from xubuntu with i3wm) so I installed Arch.

To go deeper into linux, I figured a book would be another resource, together with the arch wiki.

However, the only book (yes, i'd like a physical book for this one) I'm able to find only handles linux kernel version 2.6. We're at about 3.2/3.3 now.

51VRBXeCo6L._BO2,204,203,200_PIsitb-sticker-arrow-click,TopRight,35,-76_AA300_SH20_OU01_.jpg
source: http://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Lin … 0596005652
My question to you is; how much changes are there? Is it worth buying the book, or should I wait a little for the next Linux Kernel Internals book to come out (if there is any planned)

Thanks for any information,

Kind regards,

MatRoo
:wq

Last edited by MatRoo (2013-03-23 12:59:37)

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#2 2013-03-22 16:44:14

tomk
Forum Fellow
From: Ireland
Registered: 2004-07-21
Posts: 9,839

Re: [Solved] Worth buying the book? Linux Kernel Internals

Actually, we're at 3.8 - this is Arch, you know. smile

Do you have specific requirements here, or is it just knowledge for knowledge's sake?

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#3 2013-03-22 16:52:05

MatRoo
Member
Registered: 2013-03-22
Posts: 6

Re: [Solved] Worth buying the book? Linux Kernel Internals

tomk wrote:

Actually, we're at 3.8 - this is Arch, you know. smile

Do you have specific requirements here, or is it just knowledge for knowledge's sake?

Eurm, mostly knowledge for knowledge sake. This is under the assumption that the kernel versioning doesn't impact the traditional LAMP-stack that much (I mostly do webdev. Going to begin with C this weekend, nothing major).

Also, I figure it can't possibly work against me to know the stuff for the LP101 certification examns. :-)

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#4 2013-03-22 23:12:43

weirddan455
Member
Registered: 2012-04-15
Posts: 209

Re: [Solved] Worth buying the book? Linux Kernel Internals

You don't really need to know the internals of the kernel for any of that stuff.  LFS is just following a really long guide consisting mostly of compiling packages.  I did it once a few years back on a virtual machine.  The most you'll need to know about the kernel is how to configure and compile it.  LAMP doesn't really touch the kernel at all.  In fact you can run Apache, MySQL, and PHP on a Windows box and the configuration doesn't change all that much.

For most things all you need to know is the kernel is a big blob of code that makes your hardware work.  I'm not trying to dissuade you from learning however, that's always a positive thing so if kernel internals are what you're interested in then read up but unless you're doing something really low level or help contribute to the kernel I'm not seeing much practical use.  If you do webdev, it may be a better use of your time to learn some more PHP or MySQL instead.

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#5 2013-03-22 23:21:19

MatRoo
Member
Registered: 2013-03-22
Posts: 6

Re: [Solved] Worth buying the book? Linux Kernel Internals

weirddan455 wrote:

You don't really need to know the internals of the kernel for any of that stuff.  LFS is just following a really long guide consisting mostly of compiling packages.  I did it once a few years back on a virtual machine.  The most you'll need to know about the kernel is how to configure and compile it.  LAMP doesn't really touch the kernel at all.  In fact you can run Apache, MySQL, and PHP on a Windows box and the configuration doesn't change all that much.

For most things all you need to know is the kernel is a big blob of code that makes your hardware work.  I'm not trying to dissuade you from learning however, that's always a positive thing so if kernel internals are what you're interested in then read up but unless you're doing something really low level or help contribute to the kernel I'm not seeing much practical use.  If you do webdev, it may be a better use of your time to learn some more PHP or MySQL instead.

I know i dont have to, but I'd like to know what's happening under the hood when I'm doing my stuff.

The original questions stays :-) Is it worth buying the book if I want to know the internals, since the book only covers 2.6, and we're a tad past version 2.6.

Thanks for your reply in any case tough :-)

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#6 2013-03-23 09:49:09

McDoenerKing
Member
From: Germany
Registered: 2010-06-21
Posts: 59

Re: [Solved] Worth buying the book? Linux Kernel Internals

I do not have read the book, but I can tell you that there was a leap in versioning from 2.6.x to 3.0. Also that there weren't any major structural changes in the kernel. Worth mentioning is that the kernel gets bigger at a really fast rate, but this is mostly hardware support and such. So reading a book about 2.6.x isn't that bad just follow up the changelogs and you should be fine. If you want to know how to the kernel works and is structured, it doesn't matter much if 2.6 or 3.x. smile

I cannot comment about the book particulary.

Last edited by McDoenerKing (2013-03-23 09:50:00)

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#7 2013-03-23 10:35:17

illusionist
Member
From: localhost
Registered: 2012-04-03
Posts: 498

Re: [Solved] Worth buying the book? Linux Kernel Internals

MatRoo wrote:

The original questions stays :-) Is it worth buying the book if I want to know the internals, since the book only covers 2.6, and we're a tad past version 2.6.

I did my engineering with electronics and communication. And we used to study intel 8085's architecture for micro-processor internals. But we are tad past that version. I think that answers your question. smile


  Never argue with stupid people,They will drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience.--Mark Twain
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#8 2013-03-23 12:59:16

MatRoo
Member
Registered: 2013-03-22
Posts: 6

Re: [Solved] Worth buying the book? Linux Kernel Internals

illusionist wrote:
MatRoo wrote:

The original questions stays :-) Is it worth buying the book if I want to know the internals, since the book only covers 2.6, and we're a tad past version 2.6.

I did my engineering with electronics and communication. And we used to study intel 8085's architecture for micro-processor internals. But we are tad past that version. I think that answers your question. smile

Jup, that about covers it.

Thanks all :-) I'm marking this as solved.

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