Lions' Commentary on Unix (English, John Lions | Peter H. Salus)

An awesome book

This is a book like no others. It is exciting to scan through the lines of the original UNIX source code, see the comments and study how some stuff got implemented. It is both instructive and insightful.Lions' comments are a great source of learning. A must-read.

Classic that aged extremely well even after decades of CS progress

One of the best books about OS and general C programming intrinsics; contains valuable knowledge and pieces of history that lead to better understanding of modern stuff as well.

Another great book for geeks.

It is possible to find the original Unix sources online and this book is very useful for navigating the source code.

Invaluable for a Student of Operating Systems

You can read all the textbooks you want (and there are some pretty good ones out their like the terse one by Lister and the more expansive one by Tannenbaum) but there is not substitute for reading code. The two advantages of Version 6 are (1) it is small enough to be fully read and comprehended as a whole, (2) the code quality is first rate, and (3) the code was not written by a vast community but by a pair of outstanding computer scientists and therefor is stylistically and philosophically consistent. [OK, off by one error, so what?] What is fantastic about this package though is that Lions' commentary saves the reader so much time by making the code rapidly understandable. Naturally there is no "royal road" to 10,000 lines of code, and this does involve significant work. But it is so worth it. Even though it's now 50 years old.

Superb, a great insight into the operating system and it's structure

This is a superb book. well written with some really good insights into the why-and-how of the original UNIX source code. One of the great resources you will need if you study the design and operation of good operating systems. I highly reccommend this book. along with someof the Tanenbaum books.