New approaches for Linux-based Undergraduate Operating System Concepts Laboratories

It is widely accepted that hands-on experience is key to helping students get a better grasp of the concepts, techniques and technologies introduced in lectures. The following quote, attributed to Confucius, embodies the underlying philosophy quite well; “I hear and I forget, I see and I remember, I do and I understand”. This paper discusses the design and implementation of a set of laboratories for an introductory undergraduate lecture in Operating Systems Concepts (OSC). More specifically, we focus on exploring how the Linux kernel can be made even more suitable as a vector from which to learn operating systems’ internals. To this end, we present a new pedagogical approach to Linux-based OSC laboratories which addresses issues stemming from Linux‘s monolithic kernel architecture and its “real world” complexity. We also apply the lessons learned form educational operating systems (OS) and show how some of the assignments which are typically unsuitable for production-level OSes can be adapted to offer students the best of both world. This paper then describes how these ideas can be translated into a laboratory structure, which favors learning by scaffolding, and further develops this structure into a set of laboratories covering both “classical” and new topics in operating systems. The analysis of the technical and pedagogical features of these laboratories concludes this paper.