Blayne Sucks

I recently bought an iPod. I wasn’t all that sure that I would find it all that usefull at first, but it was an idea that kept growing on me after having bought a PowerBook for Christmas. I am a huge fan of well-engineered devices and having previously used a Compaq Presario 1700T, the PowerBook left a real impression. Anyhow, I found myself more and more drawn to the idea of getting an iPod.

After the first few weeks of owning my blue iPod mini, I have to say that I’m extremely pleased with the purchase. I was a huge music fan in high school and bought tons of CDs. I was still a huge music fan when I went to college and MP3s became huge. Even though I was still a huge fan of music when I got into some of the harder engineering classes, I ended up spending a lot of time working in study groups in libraries, the student union, and computer labs where I was unable to listen to music. If an iPod had been around back then, I would have absolutely loved it. Even now, it’s surprising how useful and fun to have access to virtually every song I’ve ever really loved virtually everywhere I go.

So I’m currently taking my first Red Hat Training class, and I’m undecided as to how useful it is. It’s a one week class. The class is RHD221: Linux Device Drivers. I have written and played with a few Linux device drivers in the past, but there’s certainly a number of things I’ve never really touched. Plus, the class covers 2.6 and all the stuff I’ve done has been on 2.4. The first day was pretty slow, but I’m hopeful that it will pick up tomorrow. The course outline seems pretty ambitious.

I did get to pick the instructor’s mind about a few book recommendations. I’ve always been a fan of O’Reilly books. In particular, I thought the two best references on the Linux Kernel were Linux Device Drivers, 2nd Edition and Understanding the Linux Kernel, 2nd Edition. This was when I was working on the 2.4 kernel. As a part of the course, we got a hardcopy of Linux Device Drivers, 3rd Edition, which covers the 2.6 kernel with no real information on the differences between 2.4 and 2.6. If you want 2.4 information, you should still use the 2nd Edition of the book. However, there’s no 3rd Edition of Understanding the Linux Kernel out yet. Thus, if you want a good reference for the 2.6 kernel internals, you might like Linux Kernel Development by Robert Love. Anyhow, I’ll keep you up to date on how the class goes.