Linux Device Drivers, 2nd Edition
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Spotlight Customer Reviews
Average Customer Rating: 4.21Customer Rating: 3
Summary: Review of Linux Device Drivers
Comment: This is the best book on the topic because it is the only book. It gives a rather clear idea of what a driver is and does and provides interesting details about the inner workings of the linux kernel.
However, it only provides snipets of code. Complete working examples are lacking. If, for example you are trying to figure out how to write a device driver that uses interrupts and actually works... good luck.
The book needs to be upgraded for the 2.2 kernel as none of the examples work with this kernel. O'Reilly has a website where one can get examples that are supposed to work with the new kernel. They don't and they are not complete.
I'd suggest waiting for the second edition. That's probably why the price for this edition has been dropped by %20.
Customer Rating: 5
Summary: Linux Device Drivers
Comment: This is the best and most complete book on writing linux device drivers yet. My only suggestions are (1) that the author writes a new addition or supplement for the 2.2 kernel and (2) that this new book include an example driver after the hello world driver that is only slighlty more complicated in that it uses the fops and one method. An example of how user-space code would then call this driver would be helpful as well.
Bravo
Customer Rating: 1
Summary: Very disorganized presentation
Comment: I can't understand the 5-star reviews of this book. I wonder if anyone who gave the book 5 stars ever tried to sit down and actually write a device driver. I doubt it.
The book suffers from two main problems:
1. Presentation is disorganized. The book reads as if the authors sat down and planned out what chapters to cover. That part is good. It does NOT seem like they planned further than that. The text within each chapter seems haphazard. Disorganized. Thrown together. The authors have no concept of when to start a new paragraph, so topics are strung together piecemeal. The whole book is confusing, making the reading of this book very frustrating.
2. The material is presented at a frenetic pace. As I was reading the book, it felt like there was a conveyor belt feeding me information, getting faster and faster without a break. The authors feel like they can throw everything but the kitchen sink at you in a very short time. Information, minute details, big ideas, analogies, and code get thrown at you fast and furious. It starts at chapter one and just gets worse from there, making the reading of this book downright difficult.
Difficult and confusing. A good characterization of the book.
In summary, this book is NOT a tutorial. It is NOT a guide. Don't make the mistake of buying this book expecting a gentle (or even a not-so-gentle) introduction to writing device drivers.
IMHO, the market is still open for a good book on the subject of writing device drivers for Linux.