Operating Systems

Foundations

1. 1What an OS is and why it exists
2. 2Hardware through the eyes of the OS
3. 3The kernel and the user/kernel boundary

Unix and Linux

1. 4Unix, Linux, distributions
2. 5From power button to shell

Processes and Concurrency

1. 6Processes
2. 7CPU scheduling
3. 8Threads and concurrency
4. 9Synchronization

Memory

1. 10Address space
2. 11Paging
3. 12Virtual memory at work

Storage and I/O

1. 13The I/O subsystem
2. 14Disks and the block layer
3. 15File systems

Isolation and Security

1. 16Protection and security
2. 17Virtualization and containers
3. 18Where operating systems are heading

What the course is about

You can learn an operating system as a vocabulary list: process, thread, page, semaphore, deadlock. But when something on a live machine starts to slow down or crash with no explanation, that vocabulary does not help much.

So here the hardware comes first, followed by the abstraction that hardware forced someone to invent. Virtual memory makes sense after the MMU, the scheduler after the timer interrupt.

18 modules

From how the CPU sees memory to containers, eBPF and confidential computing.

Two practice tracks

Systems programming in C and Linux administration. Eight labs out of thirteen are checked automatically.

Linux as the working example

Every module has a “how it actually works” section: commands you run on your own machine and see real output.

No sign-up

There is nothing to register. The materials are open, and your progress stays in your browser.

What you need to know beforehand

You will need C at the level of pointers and structs, confident use of the Linux terminal, and an understanding of binary and hexadecimal. We explain the rest along the way.