2026

Operating Systems: Three Easy Pieces Book Club

Part of the Software Internals Email Book Club.

The next book we'll read is Operating Systems: Three Easy Pieces by Remzi and Andrea Arpaci-Dusseau. The book is freely available online or you can buy a physical copy.

Because this book is not short we're going to read it in three chunks. I will only ask people to be the discussion starter for chapters until the next BREAK. During the BREAK we'll pause for a bit to allow people to catch up and for new people to join.

We won't read the online-only sections on Security after Chapter 51.

Sign up here. You will be added to the Google Group eventually. I add everyone manually and it rate limits me to 50 or something invites per day. You also must allow me to add you directly or invite you, in your Google Group settings.

Date Discussion starter Chapter(s) Title
January 24Phil Eaton1 & 2Dialogue & Introduction
January 31TBD3 & 4Dialogue & Processes
February 7TBD5Process API
February 14TBD6Direct Execution
February 21TBD7CPU Scheduling
February 28TBD8Multi-level Feedback
March 7TBD9Lottery Scheduling
March 14TBD10 & 11Multi-CPU Scheduling & Summary
March 21TBD12 & 13Dialog & Address Spaces
March 28TBD14Memory API
April 4TBD15Address Translation
April 11TBD16Segmentation
April 18TBD17Free Space Management
BREAKBREAKBREAKRegroup and decide next leaders
TBDTBD18Introduction to Paging
TBDTBD19Translation Lookaside Buffers
TBDTBD20Advanced Page Tables
TBDTBD21Swapping: Mechanisms
TBDTBD22Swapping: Policies
TBDTBD23 & 24Complete VM Systems & Summary
TBDTBD25 & 26Dialogue & Concurrency and Threads
TBDTBD27Thread API
TBDTBD28Locks
TBDTBD29Locked Data Structures
TBDTBD30Condition Variables
TBDTBD31Semaphores
TBDTBD32Concurrency Bugs
TBDTBD33 & 34Event-based Concurrency & Summary
BREAKBREAKBREAKRegroup and decide next leaders
TBDTBD35 & 36Dialogue & I/O Devices
TBDTBD37Hard Disk Drives
TBDTBD38Redundant Disk Arrays (RAID)
TBDTBD39Files and Directories
TBDTBD40File System Implementation
TBDTBD41Fast File System (FFS)
TBDTBD42FSCK and Journaling
TBDTBD43Log-structured File System (LFS)
TBDTBD44Flash-based SSDs
TBDTBD45 & 46Data Integrity and Protection & Summary
TBDTBD47 & 48Dialogue & Distributed Systems
TBDTBD49Network File System (NFS)
TBDTBD50 & 51Andrew File System (AFS) & Summary

All discussion is via a Google Group. You probably need a Google account. Your email will be public if you post but otherwise it will not be visible to anyone.

There will be no Zoom or Google Hangout, it will purely be over text email.

You should read the chapter before the date it is listed.

Discussion starter

Each weekend, one person will send out an email to start discussion. It can be as short as a paragraph or two just to get discussion going. Anyone else can chime in afterward.

It's most fun if this discussion starter doesn't summarize the chapter but tells a bit about themselves, their background, and what resonated or was confusing in the chapter, or how it tied back to something they experienced in the real-world.

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