HACKER Q&A
📣 autorun

What are good resources to learn how a computer boots?


I have a basic understanding on how boot works, but I'm interested in having a better landscape about BIOS, ACPI, drivers, and OS (Linux preferably) boot up process.

I found myself debugging on dmesg, ie. why my battery drains more than usual on S3 sleep state, and I realize I don't know what's the actual flow and responsibilities of each piece.

  👤 rendx Accepted Answer ✓
Probably not what you are looking for, but I can wholeheartedly recommend "Modern Operating Systems" by Andrew Tanenbaum. Yes, it is a whole book, and it goes to quite a level of detail, as you can imagine, but it is written really nicely and engaging.

If you don't want the full level of detail, just skip certain parts! You will still learn a lot. I know many people are reluctant to "read a book" and then skip 80% of it, but it is a really great technique for non-fiction.