Formal teachings on OS design, thoughts?

[TylerH]

I found a course on Berkley's open course web site called "Computer Science 162, 001 - Operating Systems and System Programming". Has anyone here taken any formal classes(or followed along through free mediums) on OS design? Are they useful for anything other than creating Unix ver. 5745852... ? Here's the link: http://webcast.berkeley.edu/course_deta ... rid=2010-D Anybody thinking about actually following the course? I'm not sure yet(still watching the first 2 weeks), but if I do, it'd nice to know I have peers.

[thepowersgang]

I've listened to the CS162 podcast a couple of times, it's not that bad (quite interesting). It's a pity that the Operating Systems unit at the University of Western Australia (my local uni) sucks balls.
From what I've seen, OS courses focus mostly on the theoretical aspect of OS development, and leave quite a bit off on the practical.

[JamesM]

I've listened to the CS162 podcast a couple of times, it's not that bad (quite interesting). It's a pity that the Operating Systems unit at the University of Western Australia (my local uni) sucks balls.
From what I've seen, OS courses focus mostly on the theoretical aspect of OS development, and leave quite a bit off on the practical.

That's the best way. The practical is next-to-useless for 99.99% of people. Learning the theory however, can help many utilise their OS better.

[thepowersgang]

That's the best way. The practical is next-to-useless for 99.99% of people. Learning the theory however, can help many utilise their OS better.

Well, yes, going to practical is a bad idea, but including examples is a good idea in most cases (I'm raging a bit at the amount that my course skips, and the amount the lecturer is ignorant of)

[TylerH]

I wish MIT would put up a semester of their OS design oriented CS. IMO, exokernels are really interesting, and I bet they'd be pretty biased to talking about exokernel design.

[Gaidheal]

Count me in as an exokernel fan! :¬)

My ultimate ambition is exactly that, though as I stated I'm starting with simplistic 16 bit, Real Mode bootloader and kernel.