Writing ain't perfect either (I'm being charitable and ascribe the funny stuff to the writing failures, not incompetence.) A IRQ..." and more ponderous blah blah. Well, unfortunately, that's not *assigned* IRQs (on linux and anywhere else where interrupts are used.) This is not nitpicking on my part, this is an example of authors' mental mish-mash that I, as a student, remember suffering from in the past. The problem is that interrupts and IRQs are NOT the same or equivalent things. For someone who doesn't know that yet, this text will impede comprehension of the issues. This kind of thing. Well... whatever, I guess. Hopefully the reader isn't a complete newbie and won't be thrown off by a nice little bit of semantic backstabbing.

I must say, I hate the whole series, this book, and all the "Commentary..." books, where you got 400 pages worth of damn source printout (I'm not kidding, pure source code) with perhaps another 100 pages of questionable 'commentary'. It's clear to me that Coriolis, after having successfully got rid of writers like Abrash, decided to jump on the quick rip-off bandwagon, in that particular case, linux-related. Linux--that's where the money is today!

So, here's my the ones I mentioned from this black-cover series) as it perhaps does contain something of value--but there's not nearly enough there to justify an above $10-a pop price or 600-page volumes. The publishers have clearly mastered the art of fattening books up with blatant nonsense, like api references and, now, even multi-hundred-page source printouts.

Considering how much linux info is available completely free, I can't see any reason to spend money on this book.