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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!"

4 of 129 comments (clear)

  1. Want To Write Your Own OS? No. by Mensa+Babe · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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).

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  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

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  3. How to write your own OS: by 42forty-two42 · · Score: 5, Funny
    1. Copy SCO code
    2. ???
    3. Profit!
  4. an even better tutorial... by Horny+Smurf · · Score: 5, Informative
    ... 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.