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Want To Write Your Own OS?

Posted by Hemos on from the a-trivial-task dept.

DJSlakoR writes "Looks like the Nocturnal Network has a tutorial on how to get started coding your own operating system. A very interesting read!"

6 of 129 comments (clear)

  1. heh by Blob+Pet · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Often in college, my colleagues often joked about building a Porn OS. Many of the features they talked about resided strictly in the realm of the look and feel of course (X-rated buttons and sounds), so it could have been implemented in a window manager theme (making it truly X-windows) on top of an already-existing OS.

    --
    "...today consumers have been conditioned to think of beer when they see a bullfrog..."
  2. What would you like to see most in minix? by Traderdot · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Here's someone who wrote their own OS:

    Hello everybody out there using minix -

    I'm doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won't be big and professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones. This has been brewing since april, and is starting to get ready. I'd like any feedback on things people like/dislike in minix, as my OS resembles it somewhat (same physical layout of the file-system (due to practical reasons) among other things).

    I've currently ported bash(1.08) and gcc(1.40), and things seem to work. This implies that I'll get something practical within a few months, and I'd like to know what features most people would want. Any suggestions are welcome, but I won't promise I'll implement them :-)

    Linus

    PS. Yes - it's free of any minix code, and it has a multi-threaded fs. It is NOT protable (uses 386 task switching etc), and it probably never will support anything other than AT-hard disks, as that's all I have :-(.

    Message dated 25 Aug 1991

    --

    Thoughts on stocks, markets and trading
  3. Re:Want To Write Your Own OS? No. by Richard_at_work · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I have been considering doing this, not because i want a usable OS, but because I want to learn how the hell its actually done! Sure enough i can look at mature code, but from other peoples code you learn significantly less than breaking stuff yourself. By doing it yourself you can learn WHY certain things are done in a certain method, and what doesnt work etc.

  4. Re:an even better tutorial... by BoomerSooner · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I've got both of these and they are great. Be prepared for some major in-depth subject matter.

    If my personal company ever takes off I'll probably hire a few (5-10) people to work on a linux derivitave that is similar to OS X. Not in look and feel but in the way they took a good existing OS and put a very user-friendly layer on top of it. After getting that working I'll try to get them to integrate a VM like VMWare into the OS so running Windows programs will be like running native programs (obviously we'll have to include a windows license).

  5. PseudOS by EvilTwinSkippy · · Score: 3, Interesting
    I've always wanted to finish my PsuedOS, its a phony operating system for simulated robots. The idea was to release the system wrapped with a virtual reality engine, and have folks develop robotic ships, tanks, and fighters to duke it out.

    And when they got bored of fighting, use it to model space stations, automated traffic systems, and domestic droids. The idea would by to write the system as a pile of scripts running pseudocode. The trick would be to get everyone to write using the same language, that was really only useful for real-time processing.

    My intent was also to develop "PPI" (Psuedo Programming Interfaces) that would act like device drivers, and translate a variable to, say, thrust on a rocket. Another PPI would translate position and orientation into an array. Still more would simulate the outputs from visual recoginitions systems, and so on.

    If anyone has visited my website, they would see it presently exists as a paragraph or 2 of "coming soon speak." The project is probably waiting for me to be laid up after being struck by a bus or something.

    Why go to the trouble of developing my own OS? Nothing really exists right now to comprehensively handle massive simulations. Yes you have protocols like HLA, but they are just message passing. Sure there is TCP/IP, but it's so neutral as to be of no help to someone starting out. I could develop a Java API, or a C++ library, but they are far too complex in some respects, and far too limited in others.

    Frankly every operating system we have now assumes that you are structuring everything around files, documents, and static devices. At some point we have to do better.

    --
    "Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
    --Dr.W.Edwards Deming
  6. Re:Want To Write Your Own OS? No. by HeyLaughingBoy · · Score: 3, Interesting
    As someone, who has some experience in this field, I can assure you, that the correct answer to the question "Want To Write Your Own OS?" is "No, you certainly do not."

    I have to disagree. I wrote a real-time preemptive multitasking kernel for a class on RealTime systems and it was a fantastic experience. It was for a small microcontroller (AVR series) for which few such applications exist, so I wanted something that would be useful if I decided to make it a commercial product. I learned a tremendous amount from that project, and while I stopped short of my original goals (message passing, mutexes, etc) the system was certainly usable and I would recommend that someone interested in operating systems give it a try. It does depend on how far you want to take it.

    I'd agree that writing an operating system for a desktop/server is probably not wise unless you have an earth-shattering insight, but operating systems for small embedded processors that go beyond "toy systems" can be very useful and can readily be completed by a single person in reasonable time.
    Learn by doing!