Operating Systems - Day 1

Apr 1, 2018 • Gaurav Dhingra

Looking at linux kernel

I am currently reading the book Operating System Concepts by Galvin and Galge.

What purpose does an operating system serve?

Actually an operating system is similar to the government, operating system doesn’t do anything useful for the user in its own right but rather creates an environment in which a variety of programs, apps can be function properly by making use of the hardware resources (CPU, main memory, I/O devices etc.) properly.

An operating system is a control program, i.e. it manages the execution of user programs to prevent errors and improper use of the computer.

Moore’s law (not important though): every 18 months the number of transistors on integrated circuit would double.

Computer system operation

There are a number of device controllers connected through a common bus, each device controller is in-charge of specific type of devices. For ex, for usb devices we have usb-controllers, for audio devices we have audio controllers and so on.

https://unix.stackexchange.com/q/268340

Subscribing to linux kernel mailing list

I subscribed to the main linux kernel mailing list, which is supposed to be a list of people having major discussions about the kernel and posting bugs there.

I have been trying to figure out some easy to fix issue on linux kernel. Even though I don’t even have a good understanding of the basics of C language nor of the operating system, but I want to make an attempt at getting my first patch submitted to the kernel. I can see that there is https://bugzilla.kernel.org/ but from it getting to recently non-fixed easy to fix issues might not be easy , probably I need something like an (regularly) updated wiki containing such bugs listing.

That’s it for now. See ya!