I thought it would be fun / informative to post the covers of the history Operating System Concepts. The general name for the series is “the dinosaur book” although the covers have included non-dinos as well. As far as we know this series is the best-selling operating system textbook.
The critters on the cover indicate both the evolution of operating systems and the ongoing “OS wars”. I became a co-author on this book in its Third Edition, after it was well established as one of the leading operating systems textbooks by James Peterson and Avi Silberschatz. Over time Peterson went on to other things and Avi and I were joined by Greg Gagne. The First Edition was published in 1983 and was 548 pages long. On its cover were dinosaurs and mammals labeled with the names of the important operating systems of the time, including OS/360, Multics, Scope, OS/MVS, VMS, UNIX, and CP/M. The book was a break-through because it covered not one operating system but abstracted key operating system features and used specific operating systems to illustrate those concepts. This method is still the one employed in the current edition. The Second Edition went disco with the same dinos and mammals but this time lit up in neon. The Third Edition updated the creatures and showed the following operating systems on the cover: OS/MVS, Multics, VMS, UNIX, OS/2, Mach, and MS-DOS. For the Fourth Edition we decided to stop labeling the animals on the cover, but on the inside of the cover we had descriptions of the animals as well as a time-line of operating system evolution. I thought that was cool. The same theme was in the Fifth Edition as well. The Sixth Edition had the animal information but stopped including the timeline. Along the way we published alternate versions of the book that used Java as the descriptive language and for exercises and projects. For more information on the current OSC, including sample exercises, errata, and teaching aids, check out the text home page.
Would someone please advise on the difference between the International Student Version and the Standard Version of Operating System Concepts 8th Edition?
The International Student version has some of the more advanced content removed as well as some changed exercises (the exercises pertaining to the removed content).
It is interesting to learn more about the history of the textbook, and a little more about the covers, but I’m wondering what the motivation was / is for using dinosaurs.
Returning to teaching after a 22-year hiatus, it seems that many of the concepts I learned in graduate school (using the 2nd edition in the 1980s) are still front and center in the 8th edition (being used in a course I’m teaching this fall). Are the dinosaurs intended to evoke the long history of basic concepts used in the field?
Hi Joe,
In general, the dinosaurs are kept because they were on the book when it started and the book series is now known as “the dinosaur book”. Early editions had the dino’s labeled with specific OSes to show evolution, but we dropped labeling the dinos over time. So showing evolution as well as history.
As to the contents, yes, much of the core concepts have stayed the same. Scheduling, memory management, I/O, and so on are the root of operating systems. Of course a lot of the details have changed, optimizations have occurred, and so on. And some concepts are (mostly) new, like virtualization.
Hope you enjoy the book.
Hi,
I am wondering what the differences between the 8th edition of the book and the new updated one (which includes the chapter on Win 7) are ? As there is a difference of 20 pages between the two, has some content been removed, or just rewritten so it takes up less space, or maybe printed with slightly smaller characters ?
Thanks for the explanation.
Hi Danny, I just double checked and both editions are the same page count. Not sure why you think 8th edition with the new Win 7 chapter is shorter? Maybe some web site has the details wrong.
Both editions are exactly the same, except that the Win XP chapter in the original 8th Ed is updated to cover Win 7. Thanks for your interest in the book.
Hi,
Thanks for the info. Amazon showed indeed different page counts for the two editions. They also tend to differ on many web sites, and the Library of Congress catalog seems to have details about the “regular” 8th edition only.
Ah, very interesting. Well thanks for checking and I hope you enjoy the book.
Hi Peter, thought you might be able to comment on the differences between the 8th Edition Updated and the Essentials book from the perspective of someone trying to teach themselves OS fundamentals (everyone said “read the dinosaur book!”). Which book would you recommend for a self learner and why? From the descriptions on Amazon.com I couldn’t really get a sense of which would be better for use outside of a university course context…
Thanks,
Chris
Hi Chris, glad to hear folks like the book. Essentials is just a stripped down version of the 8th Edition. It keeps the chapters that most faculty use when teaching a 1 semester course from the book. 8th Ed has more material but it’s more than 1 semester’s worth of knowledge
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