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Computer Book Store > Computer books beginning with E
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Essential Linux Device Drivers |
Author: Sreekrishnan Venkateswaran
Published: 2008-04-06 |
List price: $49.99
Our price: $38.99
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Usually ships in 24 hours
As of: September 09th, 2010 04:31:33 AM
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Customer comments on this selection.
 Up to date and Comprehensive
This book deals with the modern 2.6.23/24 kernel and aspects of all types of drivers. The Explanations are clear and to the point and the code examples are well documented. It does a very good job of explaining the structures from the kernel you use in driver writing. By having a chapter for each type of driver, often with a working sample, the book serves both as a reference and good read.
Excellent
Great book. It takes the most interesting stuff about Linux device drivers. There are not a single book that can cover all topics, nevertheless this one is a great companion when programming at linux box no matter whether you are either newbie or experienced developer. Highly recomended.
 Copy and paste of device drivers
If you really want to understand how linux device drivers works, do not buy this book. If you just want to take a look what kind of device drivers are there and how it roughly looks like, you may take a look at this book. (But, do not expect more from those driver chapters. it is not for you to understand how it work. it is merely for what devices are there) I purchased this book by just reading the reviews here, and got disappointed a lot. I can not believe how people gave more than 2 stars to this book. I believe that if you are real software engineer from linux related field, you can not give more than 2 stars. This book looks like just a collection of "copy and paste" from many device drivers source code, and explanation is very superficial (I felt that this book is just like his jot downs from his work plus some copy and paste from linux driver codes). If you are real device driver developer, this book will not help at all. I would recommend linux device drivers 3rd edition from oreily even though it does not cover latest kernel.
 Missing info
I tried to find docomentation about Module.symvers, linking at runtime, symbol issues, etc... No luck. At least the o'reilly book touches on these topics.
The best book yet on Linux kernel programming
I keep "Essential Linux Device Drivers" on my desk, next to a bunch of other Linux kernel programming books: "Linux Device Drivers" by Rubini, "Linux Kernel Internals" by Beck et. al. (which is a bit outdated), "Embedded Linux" by Hollabaugh, "Building Embedded Linux Systems" by Yaghmour, "Understanding Linux Network Internals" by Benvenuti.
"Essential Linux Device Drivers" is the best one yet, followed by Rubini's as a closed second. Between these two books alone, you can learn how to write any device driver from scratch - if handed the hardware manual. But "Essential Linux Device Drivers" goes deeper, and has more real life code examples.
The code in "Essential Linux Device Drivers" has obviously been copied from real development projects, and I found no errors in it. I've looked carefully at the networking driver code, serial driver code, i2c driver code, and kernel thread/interlocking/timer primitives.
There are some suggestions I have (and this applies to all Linux books I've read). One is to make clear that the spin_lock_irqsave() API should be used instead of spin_lock() whenever it may be called from interrupt context. Second is to explain how the interrupt routine stack space is created at the bottom of the regular (thread) stack space.
Overall, good job, Mr. Venkateswaran! You've helped me a lot with my driver code. The $44.99 I paid was well spent on your book.
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