Want To Write Your Own OS?

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

Comments

Want To Write Your Own OS? No.

[Mensa Babe]

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." Of course, it looks great at the beginning when you code a first working bootloader, then it's a great joy when your first single-tasking kernel can run its first process, et cetera. But as soon as you start working on the multitasking, decent scheduling, threads, multiple processes, file system, networking, writing an optimizing compiler and assembler suited for your platform, while constantly keeping security in mind, it soon becomes more work than using mature systems, like Open BSD or Debian, or even Gentoo. Don't get me wrong, I think everyone should write few toy operating systems, that's the only way one can learn the craft, but don't expect that your OS will soon become better than the systems already available, because they are bloated, while yours wouldn't be. This is a myth, and quite misleading at that, to say the very least. Still, this is great news (even if not actually new to anyone experienced).

What would you like to see most in minix?

[Traderdot]

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

How to write your own OS:

[42forty-two42]

1. Copy SCO code
2. ???
3. Profit!

an even better tutorial...

[Horny Smurf]

... is Tanenbaum's books. "Linux is obsolete" might not have been his finest hour (although some of his points were valid, and linux has since added module support to cut down on the monolithic nature), but minix is a learning OS (in the same way pascal is a learning language), and is much easier to understand (and better documented :) than the linux kernel is.

• Operating Systems: Design and Implementation (w/CD), 2nd Edition (the minix book)
• Modern Operating Systems

Re:Just like Linus.

[Arandir]

He didn't take GNU and write a kernel for it. The reason was that there was no GNU System at the time! There was a compiler, a shell, and some other stuff, but it wasn't anywhere to being close to an operating system.

Quite the opposite happened in fact. GNU looked at the fledging Linux operating system and started porting their stuff to it. Glibc was written for Linux, not the other way around, for one example.

GNU was not an operating system that merely lacked a kernel. When RMS says that Linus merely dropped in a kernel, he is lying. Otherwise it wouldn't have taken Debian years to get Debian HURD bootable. It wouldn't have taken them years to get a Debian BSD to boot. I don't know how anyone can consider Debian "The GNU System" when it took crowbars, sledgehammers and ripsaws to get it to use The GNU System's own kernel. Yet Debian is closer to what RMS means by "The GNU System" than anything else out there.

Re:Why not?

[CTalkobt]

>>Emacs would make a great operating system, now if only someone would write a decent text editor for it.

They have. You simply have to invoke a shell from within Emacs and invoke vi.

*ducks*