Linux System Development: Programming with the Kernel and C APIs

This audiobook is narrated by a digital voice.

Master the Linux Kernel Interface and Build Professional System Software from Scratch

Most programming books teach you how to use frameworks and libraries. This book teaches you how to build them.

Linux System Development takes you beneath the abstractions to the powerful C-based system call interface that controls the operating system itself. You will learn to create processes, manage memory, handle concurrency, and build networked applications using the same APIs that power web servers, databases, compilers, and the core utilities of every Linux system.

What You Will Learn

This comprehensive guide walks you through five essential domains of system programming, from fundamental concepts to production-grade techniques.

You will master file I/O and the file descriptor model, understanding how everything from disk files to network sockets follows the same elegant interface. You will learn process management through the fork-exec-wait model, enabling you to create complex multi-process applications like shells and servers. You will explore interprocess communication using pipes, shared memory, message queues, and POSIX threads for concurrent programming.

Advanced chapters cover socket programming for building TCP and UDP servers, event-driven I/O with select, poll, and epoll for handling thousands of simultaneous connections, and memory management including virtual address spaces, the heap, and memory-mapped files.

Professional Development Skills

Beyond core APIs, you will build a complete debugging toolkit using GDB, strace, valgrind, and performance profiling tools. Security chapters cover privilege management, buffer overflow prevention, and defensive programming practices. Every concept is reinforced with practical, working code examples and hands-on exercises.