In this class you will learn and understand the role(s) of an operating system and its design principles. You will study the way in which an operating system manages running programs, memory, inter-process/thread communication, and file systems. You will learn how to use the operating system when developing systems/programs. Examples will be taken from the Linux, MacOS, and Windows operating systems.
This syllabus and an overall view of the course is further described in these lecture notes
The ordered list of course topics is:
The above schedule is not set in stone. Hopefully the course is dynamic due to interaction with students and some topics may require more or less time than indicated above, and some timely topics may be added on the fly.
(ICS 311 or EE 367) and ICS 314.
Programming languages used in this course include mostly Java and C/C++.
https://courses.ics.hawaii.edu/ics332_spring2026/
The Website is the authoritative source for all course material. It contains all information regarding the instructor, the TA, their availability in office hours, the schedule of lectures, and all relevant course announcements.
Some lectures will be inverted in this course. This means that screencasts will be watched by students before lecture periods. Some lecture periods will be spent doing practice exercises based on the screencasts. This is so that, for more difficult or more technical (e.g., mathematical) content, students will have the opportunity to listen to the lecture at their own pace, watch more difficult parts multiple times. Lecture periods will be devoted to supervised practice.
The main text for this course is Operating Systems: Three Easy Pieces (a.k.a. OSTEP), by R.H. Arpaci-Dusseau and A.C. Arpaci-Dusseau. The chapters from this textbook are Freely Available, but you can purchase the whole book as hardcover, softcover, or PDF. See the book’s Web site. The course will make frequent references to this textbook, and there will be reading assignments from it.
There are plenty of texts on operating systems, which you may find useful, such as the following classics:
The grade is computed on a total of 1000 points, broken down as follows:
Grading will be as follows:
Extra Credit: Extra credit will be given to all students based on CES evaluation completion rates, as follows:
Students can turn in optional homework assignments to receive feedback. Assignments specify which files to turn in (file names and types) and, whenever applicable, how programs should build.
All assignments are be turned in via Lamaku, by the specified deadline.
Quizzes are announced in class the week before, and will take place in class. Quizzes are always at the beginning of the first of the two weekly lectures, unless the first lecture is on a holiday, in which case the quiz is at the beginning of the second lecture.
A student who arrives in class more than 5 minutes late cannot take the quiz. There is no makeup quiz.
All occurrences of academic dishonesty, as defined below, will result in a grade of 0 for the assignment or exam, a drop of the overall grade for the course by one letter (e.g., a B becomes a C), and in a memo in your ICS department file describing the incident. This will be done for all students involved, and reported to UH’s Office of Judicial Affairs are required by university rules.
Disciplinary sanctions range from a warning to expulsion from the university, as seen at: http://www.catalog.hawaii.edu/about-uh/campus-policies.htm
See relevant excerpts below:
The integrity of a university depends upon academic honesty, which consists of independent learning and research. Academic dishonesty includes cheating and plagiarism. The following are examples of violations of the Student Conduct Code that may result in suspension or expulsion from UH Manoa.
Cheating includes, but is not limited to, giving unauthorized help during an examination, obtaining unauthorized information about an examination before it is administered, using inappropriate sources of information during an examination, altering the record of any grade, altering an answer after an examination has been submitted, falsifying any official UH Manoa record, and misrepresenting the facts in order to obtain exemptions from course requirements.
Plagiarism includes, but is not limited to, submitting, to satisfy an academic requirement, any document that has been copied in whole or in part from another individual’s work without identifying that individual; neglecting to identify as a quotation a documented idea that has not been assimilated into the student’s language and style; paraphrasing a passage so closely that the reader is misled as to the source; submitting the same written or oral material in more than one course without obtaining authorization from the instructors involved; and “dry-labbing,” which includes obtaining and using experimental data from other students without the express consent of the instructor, utilizing experimental data and laboratory write-ups from other sections of the course or from previous terms, and fabricating data to fit the expected results.
The faculty member must notify the student of the alleged academic misconduct and discuss the incident in question. The faculty member may then take academic action against the student as the faculty member deems appropriate, which will consist of:
Reporting the incident to UH’s Office of Judicial Affairs, as required by the university
Giving a grade of zero on the assignment/exam for which cheating occurred
Lowering the overall grade in the course by one full letter step (an “A” becomes a “B”, a “B” becomes a “C”, etc.)
The above actions may be appealed through the Academic Grievance Procedure, available in the Office of Judicial Affairs.