Linux Device Drivers by Alessandro Rubini and Jonathan Corbet O'Reilly & Associates
Review by Don Bindner Linux Device Drivers is one of those books that you read to release your inner hacker (the good kind of hacker, of course). The Linux mantra might be ``with the source you can even fix it yourself,'' but the honest truth is that most people wouldn't know where to begin fixing anything in the Linux kernel. Now to get a sense of what things feel like inside kernel space, you might reasonably have picked up a book like Understanding the Linux Kernel (by Bovet and Cesati), which takes you through the memory manager, the file systems, etc. It is a fine book, but your experience would be akin to having engines explained rather than building an engine yourself. With Linux Device Drivers, you get inside and learn how to write your own kernel modules. It begins with a "hello world" module that does nothing and works up from there. The book focuses primarily on the 2.4 kernel series, but every chapter includes a section on backward compatibility to the 2.2 and even 2.0 kernels. Even if you are not actually writing a driver, this gives you a wonderful history of how Linux has progressed and improved. None of this comes without effort, however. You need to be something of a C programmer before you pick this book up, and you have to be prepared to read carefully. Many times when I was tired, I found myself setting it down so I could pick it up fresh later. And that was before I got to chapter 10 (a bit over half way) which began ``Before we go on to more advanced topics...'' Still, if you are a C programmer and interested in how Linux works, I really recommend it. It takes the kernel, something mysterious and magical, and puts it within your grasp. Not every book can do that. -- Don Bindner <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> ----------------------------------------------------------------- To get off this list, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with Subject: unsubscribe -----------------------------------------------------------------
