[HN Gopher] The Linux Programming Interface as a university cour...
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The Linux Programming Interface as a university course text
Author : teleforce
Score : 167 points
Date : 2026-03-15 23:51 UTC (23 hours ago)
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| agiacalone wrote:
| I use TLPI as an optional text for my CS Operating Systems
| course! It's honestly the best resource for a comprehensive look
| at the innards of Linux. I actually even snip select pages for
| lectures.
| le-mark wrote:
| It's a big book, can you describe what parts you use and how?
| Joel_Mckay wrote:
| People should do a foundation course to figure out which
| deprecated parts of the kernel source to avoid. It is
| nontrivial, but talking with the active developers will save
| a lot of guess work. =3
|
| Introductory LFD103 is a free course:
|
| https://training.linuxfoundation.org/training/a-beginners-
| gu...
|
| Some channels to get some experience handling the modern
| kernel source:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/@johannes4gnu_linux96/videos
|
| https://www.youtube.com/@nirlichtman/videos
| shiroiuma wrote:
| What a horrible selection for a university textbook! It doesn't
| get trivially updated every year to prevent reuse and reselling,
| so how is this supposed to generate more profit for the
| booksellers? /s
|
| Seriously though, this book is fantastic, and far better than
| typical course textbooks. I'm honestly a little surprised that
| universities would select it.
| catfood wrote:
| One of the greatest texts ever written. Ok maybe just one of my
| favorites. I wouldn't mind a 2nd edition though... surely the
| system call interface has changed a bit since 2010.
| looopTools wrote:
| We did not get as recommend or required reading in a course. But
| the professor did recommend it to me outside of class.
| jll29 wrote:
| My favorite book about systems programming on UNIX systems is the
| book by the late Stevens, but this book more detailed, Linux-
| specific and if updated (after 16 years, in which Linux did not
| stand still), could steal the crown from Stevens.
| jumploops wrote:
| So much of practical CS is abiding by standards created by solo
| programmers in the past.
|
| My university frowned on any industry-related classes (i.e.
| teaching software engineering tools vs. theoretical CS), but I
| was fortunate enough to know a passionate grad student who
| created a 1-credit seminar course on this exact topic.
|
| This course covered CLIs/git/Unix/shell/IDEs/vim/emacs/regex/etc.
| and, although I had experience with Linux/git already, was
| invaluable to my early education (and adoption of Vim!).
|
| It makes sense that this isn't a core topic, as a CS education
| should be as pure as possible, but when you're learning/building,
| you're forced to live within an operating system and architecture
| that are built on decades of trade-offs and technical debt.
| eru wrote:
| > It makes sense that this isn't a core topic, as a CS
| education should be as pure as possible, [...]
|
| I don't think that's a good goal. Otherwise, why let you near a
| computer at all, and not restrict you to chalk and blackboards?
| kgwxd wrote:
| If you've made it that far in life without learning how to use
| a screwdriver, engineering would be a bad choice of major. And
| paying insane amounts of money for someone to explain how to
| use one would be an even poorer choice.
| ferguess_k wrote:
| Same reason I always wonder whether I should go for an
| electrician/mechanic/avion mechanic education if I'm laid off
| (and cannot find a job).
|
| I'm really not a handyman -- quite the opposite -- it took me
| and my father 30 minutes to change the car battery last time
| -- and most of the time was spent on pushing a component
| dropped to the bottom out of the car. I used to think that
| more practices bring some sort of linear growth of the skill
| in the beginning, but now I tend to believe that for certain
| people (who are not suitable for the trade), the beginning is
| totally random -- I could practice 100 times and fail 100
| tiles randomly, without really learning anything -- because
| there are an unlimited number of ways to do one thing,
| theoretically.
|
| Software suits me way more. Soldering is also OK albeit more
| confusing. Unfortunately there is no trade that primarily
| deals with microcontrollers, except in military/defense.
| kace91 wrote:
| Universities consider themselves pure and isolated from lowly
| industry.
|
| Industry demands specifically university degrees to gatekeep
| positions.
|
| And then we leave teenagers to figure out the puzzle by
| themselves. I think it's a disservice to the youth.
| someprick wrote:
| Universities produce research, and students; Students produce
| industry, and the body politic; Industry and polity produce
| university funding.
|
| A cycle I like to call, the "ring-bugger."
|
| I'm not saying it's right, or acceptable, or particularly
| moral... But I agree that by obscuring the facts, we only
| serve to confound the decent and good-willed of our students.
|
| Edit: derp.
| coldpie wrote:
| Yeah, I got duped by this. Did a CS degree because that's
| what you're "supposed" to do to get a programming job, and it
| was almost all theoretical junk I had no interest in. I hated
| it. I think I learned useful things in like, two of my
| classes. I knew more about programming than all but one of my
| instructors. It was awful and going through that degree
| program is one of the biggest regrets in my life. But hey, I
| get to stick "CS Degree from University" as the very last
| line on my resumes, I guess. Woo.
| zabzonk wrote:
| Where exactly did this "supposed to" come from? I've never
| met anyone who expected (or needed) a CS degree to teach
| them programming.
| raw_anon_1111 wrote:
| So do you think most people get into tens of thousands of
| debt to be "a better citizen of the world" or to learn
| what they need to know for some company to allow them to
| exchange labor for money to support their addictions to
| food and shelter?
| Pay08 wrote:
| While I have my issues with the system, many Soviet-
| controlled countries implemented a two-tier higher education
| system that solved this by having one tier be focused on
| practical subjects and the other on theoretical ones.
| kjellsbells wrote:
| Britain used to have this too. Sadly it was strangled to
| death by the UK class system, but the replacement didnt
| help.
|
| Once upon a time the white collar track was to go to
| University. One of the old ones if your class situation was
| pushing you towards executive roles in the Civil Service or
| banking or some big corporation. One of the newer, redbrick
| ones if your horizon was more like running a textile mill
| in the North. You were trained to think and had a fairly
| Great Books style of curriculum.
|
| For the people who needed advanced education to keep the
| electric grokulator working, there were polytechnics.
| People came out of here with practical skills. In some
| areas, like mathematics, there would have been overlap
| between University and Polytechnic courses.
|
| Then there were technical colleges where working class
| people could get skills to help them in their jobs, like
| rebuilding engines or CNC machining.
|
| Then, people got antsy that university was so elite and
| only 5% of highschoolers were going. why not let polys be
| universities? After all, we need to keep up in a global
| economy. And so there was a massive gold rush and places
| that had no business or capability became A University
| overnight.
|
| But...Brits being how they are, they still stratified
| themselves into class layers. You're far more likely to
| find a Russell Group university graduate in a fancy job
| than someone from a former poly in the North. The class
| system persisted despite everything, and attempts to
| broaden educational access ultimately did not
| simultaneously keep the quality uniformly high.
| loughnane wrote:
| Sounds like MIT's missing semester
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46273762
| pjmlp wrote:
| I guess it is more appealing to current university students, than
| reading about UNIX Lion's commentary, Minix, BSD design, and
| other academix books with UNIX like implementations.
| pikachu0625 wrote:
| One of the best books I've read. It helped me lead meetings and
| solve complex problems where other engineers struggled.
| markus_zhang wrote:
| Thanks for sharing. What kind of problems do you solve in daily
| work? Sounds like an interesting career path.
| phanarch wrote:
| catfood's point about a 2nd edition is worth unpacking:
|
| The syscall ABI itself is remarkably stable, backward compact is
| practically Linux's religion, but the conceptual model has
| shifted substantially.
|
| Namespaces and cgroups went from obscure subsystems to the
| foundational abstraction containers run on.
|
| io_uring rewrote the async I/O model.
|
| eBPF changed how you think about observability and policy
| enforcement.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Excited to see there is a new edition coming.
| evanjrowley wrote:
| This is the curriculum I wish my university's CS program had back
| in the day.
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