charles would go! > > Don't know how many people know this, but this semesters ics412, operating > systems class, is (maybe was) based on Linux (the main reason I'm taking > the class). I thought it was a pretty good idea, an introduction to > operating systems using a real operating system. Apparently the class > (and I guess many os classes at other universities as well) is typically > based on os simulations, and that previously ics412 was taught using an os > simulation written in Java. > > From reading the instructor's email, apparently he's considering switching > from Linux back to this previous format of using the java os > emulator/simulator instead. This was based on the results of the last > project (all the projects are from Gary Nutt's "Kernel Projects for > Linux"): seems like a lot of people didn't turn it in, or did a poor job > of it (the project was to write your own shell that was capable of > executing commands, redirecting stdin/stdout from/to files, piping the > results of one command into the input of another, most of it was trivial, > though I confess I had problems with the piping between processes). > > From > reading his email to the class it looks like the problems (excuses?) > people had were that they weren't good enough C programmers, Linux isn't > documented well enough, and os stuff is hard. All of these answers kind > of blow me away. > > This is a senior level computer science course, and none > of the C programming for the projects is very difficult. Shouldn't > comp-sci grads be able to program? > > As for Linux documentation, there's > tutorials all over the net, there's tons of books, there's news groups, > user groups > (LUAU for instance...), the man pages, etc. And then there's the source, > dammit, use the source. If I remember correctly, they used to use UNIX > for os courses because they had the source, and when the source was > closed(?) Tanenbaum wrote minix to replace it. > > I'll agree with the "os stuff is hard" argument, but jeez, that's why we > have a class on it. > > So, I guess I'm wondering if I'm dorking out here, and am just flat out > wrong. Thoughts? > > -Charles >