For one-semester, junior/senior-level courses in Introduction to Operating Systems and Principles of Operating Systems in the departments of Computer Science and Engineering and Information and Computer Science.

Responding to a major paradigm shift from single-processor to distributed and parallel computer systems, this succinct text is the first of its kind to integrate those fundamental ideas, principles, and concepts in both centralized and distributed computing that remain constant even as new, more advanced systems are introduced. In addition, it presents many examples from commercial and research operating systems as a way to immediately illustrate the relevance of particular concepts.