The topics here are those which your instructor plans to touch on during the last couple of weeks of classes.  Some will be discussed in more detail than others.  Let "DS" refer to "distributed system" in this document.

What is a DS?
What are the differences between a distributed operating system and a network operating system?
What are the advantages of a DS in general? over a centralized computer system?
What are some disadvantages of a DS?
Why is a multiprocessor time-sharing system (one computer, many processors) not considered to be a DS?
What are the characteristics of a DS?
What are some design issues in Dss?
What is meant by transparency? flexibility? reliability? performance? scalability? in a DS?
Name and describe several types of transparency in a DS.
Compare a monolithic kernel to a micro-kernel approach.
Describe a simple communications architecture (including the names of its "layers" and what each layer does) and (basically) how it works.
What are communications protocols and why are they important?
What is TCP/IP?
What is the OSI protocol architecture and how does it compare with TCP/IP?
What is the purpose of standardizing communications architectures?
What is process migration? Explain how it works.
Name/describe a few strategies for process migration.
How is message passing used in DS?
What is a remote procedure call and how is it used in DS?
What are clusters?
What are the benefits & limitations of clustering?
What are some problems in determining the global state of a DS?
Why are deadlock and mutual exclusion more difficult to handle in a DS?