▲ 7 points

Best technical books about *BSD / macOS?

by LucidLynx·5y ago·14 comments·view on hn ↗

I already took a look (quickly) at one OS Internals (http://newosxbook.com/index.php), but the books seem a bit old now, and very expensive for three old books (75$ each, 3 volumes).

Do you have any recommendation for books / blog posts / persons to follow... for techie stuff about *BSD / macOS, like OS internals, Darwin kernel internals, etc...

Thanks

14 comments

Take a look at The Design And Implementation Of The Freebsd Operating System. It's a pretty good look at the history of FreeBSD and how it is put together.

Of course, if you're really after Darwin/macOS info, a lot of the book won't apply. Apple took FreeBSD userspace and FreeBSD network stack (in 2000ish), but I don't think they tool the scheduling or process management. And the current version of the book covers a lot of things that were added to FreeBSD after Apple took the stuff they did; maybe the earlier version of the book would be better, because Apple didn't do a lot of updates from upstream.

Thanks, I will definitely take a look :)

There’s a lot of documentation available at freebsd.org, openbsd.org and netbsd.org. Not like in the Linux world where documentation is scattered all over the WWW.

When it comes to books, you might want to have a look at Absolute FreeBSD by Michael W. Lucas. He’s also written books about OpenBSD, ZFS etc: https://mwl.io/nonfiction/os

Other web resources: https://www.unitedbsd.com/

Thanks, will take a look! :)

There was one really excellent book from a Google engineer about macOS. I forget the name. I have it myself somewhere.

But it's indeed very old, its relevance is minimal now. It's kinda time for a new one.

Amit Singh wrote the book you are referring to. But it is now long out of date.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0321278542/

I believe the book the OP is referring to in their post is effectively newer editions of Amit's book, but I could be wrong.

Hi :)

The books I was refering to are from Jonathan Levin, who finished to work (and publish) the three different volumes two years ago.

I live in Europe now so it is not possible for me to order them via Amazon (the only physical distributor from what I understood), and ordering them directly from another distributor requires 50$ per each book (so, 125$ in total for one volume).

I am not a fan or user of ebooks for this case I would love to have this solution :)

Wow indeed they look good but they are crazy expensive especially when ordered in Europe. $375 for all 3. If I'd get them it would be mainly just as a matter of interest but I couldn't warrant that kind of expense. I bought the Amit Singh book and used it a couple of times but it was only $50 for the whole thing.

I'd actually prefer ebooks but they don't seem to be available like that at all.

Indeed, they are crazy expensive...

Will begin with Absolute FreeBSD and take a look at recent forum / blog posts for now.

Maybe I will send an email to the author, asking if he plans to release the ebooks (who knows)...

FreeBSD also has an excellent handbook (though it's not kept up to date as much as it should be). I use it as my daily driver OS since Apple locked things down too much for me and am very happy with it. The thing I like the most is that it's one OS that does things one way, not like the fragmentation of Linux where every distro is different.

But I use every OS pretty much every day :) I like it that way.

But I wasn't aware of Absolute FreeBSD very much (I probably have heard of it before as the cover looks familiar). Will definitely get it, thanks for the tip!

FreeBSD is a great OS! I don't like so much Linux distributions - way too much fragmented too, and I just want something that "just works" and not "barely works". Also, coming from *BSD, Linux is too messy for me... just my opinion :)

I used FreeBSD on a Thinkpad when I was in college but switched to mac as I became annoyed by Thinkpad and wanted a MacBook Air like computer...

Perhaps you are thinking of Mac OSX Internals, by Amit Singh, published in 2006

That one yeah!

Of course it's wildly out of date now. A followup would be great.

Thanks!

Indeed, I have that book too, but it is quiet old now...