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Redox – A Unix-Like Operating System Written in Rust

redox-os.org

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Re: Redox – A Unix-Like Operating System Written in Rust

#61
post #9

I'm pretty impressed that 37 people are capable of writing an entire OS with a gui in under a year. Looks really cool.

Ours didn't have a GUI. It took us less than a year to write and the team was never larger than 6 people. It's less complicated than it seems at first sight. There are a lot of things about machines that you need to understand, but the technology itself is relatively well-understood and sane practices are encouraged. It blows my mind that less than twenty people can string up something non-trivial with Node.js et co.…

As somebody who develops significantly complex in Node.js and considers operating systems to largely be black magic, I'd love to have a chat about this some day, and compare notes :)

Re: Redox – A Unix-Like Operating System Written in Rust

#62
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Operating systems aren't that big, and if you know your stuff, I'm sure it's not too hard to pull off. Here's an example I borrowed from StackExchange: According to cloc run against 3.13, Linux is about 12 million lines of code. 7 million LOC in drivers/, 2 million LOC in arch/, and only 139 thousand LOC in kernel/. ( http://unix.stackexchange.com/a/223753 ) Edit: Would be nice to have the numbers for the latest Mini…

Warning: I have no idea about systems programming. I understand that the amount of lines of driver code comes from the variety of devices. But still, it looks completely unbalanced, when compared to the kernel code itself. So I have some questions here: 1) Shouldn't there be common interfaces / abstractions for most of the devices? 2) If they exist, could they be improved somehow? 3) A bit unrelated, but how fun / in…

1. There are, but they only exist in software. You have to write a different glue layer for virtually every device. And sometimes the device's model doesn't really fit your driver's.

2. Not... really. Standards are supposed to do that. Many hardware manufacturers don't really implement them in a proper manner, and "whoever designed this flash controller should die a slow, painful death" is not something users care about.

3. If the device is well-documented and relatively standard-abiding, it's extremely fun if you're passionate about it and relatively painless if you're not. Otherwise, it's about as fun as digging a tunnel under Mordor with a toothpick.

Re: Redox – A Unix-Like Operating System Written in Rust

#63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ours didn't have a GUI. It took us less than a year to write and the team was never larger than 6 people. It's less complicated than it seems at first sight. There are a lot of things about machines that you need to understand, but the technology itself is relatively well-understood and sane practices are encouraged. It blows my mind that less than twenty people can string up something non-trivial with Node.js et co.…

As somebody who develops significantly complex in Node.js and considers operating systems to largely be black magic, I'd love to have a chat about this some day, and compare notes :)

Read the MINIX book. It's basically a walk-through (with source code) of entire operating system.

Re: Redox – A Unix-Like Operating System Written in Rust

#64
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As somebody who develops significantly complex in Node.js and considers operating systems to largely be black magic, I'd love to have a chat about this some day, and compare notes :)

Read the MINIX book. It's basically a walk-through (with source code) of entire operating system.

The book is over a hundred dollars.

As someone who is working on a simple os and a college student, this saddens me.

I'll have to see if my library has one.

Re: Redox – A Unix-Like Operating System Written in Rust

#67
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As somebody who develops significantly complex in Node.js and considers operating systems to largely be black magic, I'd love to have a chat about this some day, and compare notes :)

Read the MINIX book. It's basically a walk-through (with source code) of entire operating system.

@gravypod if your college library doesn't have it you should ask them if they can get it through interlibrary loan; most colleges (in the USA) participate in this program which gives you access to virtually every book ever printed.

Re: Redox – A Unix-Like Operating System Written in Rust

#68
post #14
post #4

Not a fan of the name, sounds too much like Redux :/

Presumably named after the redox reaction that causes iron to rust.

Not that it matters... Apparently rust-lang is named after the rust fungus not the chemical reaction. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rust_%28programming_language%2...

Re: Redox – A Unix-Like Operating System Written in Rust

#69
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Read the MINIX book. It's basically a walk-through (with source code) of entire operating system.

@gravypod if your college library doesn't have it you should ask them if they can get it through interlibrary loan; most colleges (in the USA) participate in this program which gives you access to virtually every book ever printed.

I'll give it a go. Hopefully they do and I hope Minix has the chicken and egg problem sorted out of loading a microkernel.

Re: Redox – A Unix-Like Operating System Written in Rust

#70
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As somebody who develops significantly complex in Node.js and considers operating systems to largely be black magic, I'd love to have a chat about this some day, and compare notes :)

Read the MINIX book. It's basically a walk-through (with source code) of entire operating system.

Thank you for the suggestion! Happy to see that my University library actually has it.
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