In order to truly understand what makes Linux tick and why it works well on various systems, you need to investigate further into the heart of the kernel. The third edition of Understanding the Linux Kernel takes you on a tour of most significant data structures, algorithms, and programming tricks used in the kernel. This edition of the book covers Version 2.6, which has seen significant changes to nearly every kernel subsystem, particularly in the field of memory management and block devices. This book focuses on the following topics: Memory management, including file buffering, process swapping, and Direct Memory Access (DMA) Virtual Filesystem layer and the Second and Third Extended Filesystems Signal Process creation and scheduling, interrupt, and the interface is important for device drivers Timing Synchronization in the kernel interprocess communication (IPC) Program execution Understanding the Linux Kernel will acquaint you with all the work in Linux, but more than just an academic exercise. You'll learn what conditions bring the best Linux performance, and you will see how to meet the challenges of providing good system response during process scheduling, file access, and memory management in a variety of environments.