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The little book about OS development

littleosbook.github.io

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Re: The little book about OS development

#41

Post by samwilliams »

copine wrote: post #40
samwilliams wrote: post #29

As someone that has just spent the last 27 months building an OS from scratch in a University research environment (an OS that can survive catastrophic hardware and software failure [0]), I am very impressed with the quality of this document. I only wish I had found it previously! OS dev can be great fun and gives you a level of understanding about how computers actually work that is hard to gain from other sources.…

What is your opinion on some of the issues? I see the project seems dead, and some of the simple issues like fixing the frame buffer instructions, and replacing external with extern. I'd love to get into OS dev, and help make this 'book' better, but it seems dead and no one has taken the time to fix such issues

Do you mean with the 'little book of OS dev'? Or one of the other resources?

In general, my experience has been that OS dev is a topic that is best approached through the study of a variety of different documents, simultaneously. For example, you would do well to read both the originally posted 'little book...', as well as the University of Birmingham text. Then it might be a good idea to look at the OSdev wiki pages for the specific tasks that you want to work on.

> but it seems dead and no one has taken the time to fix such issues

Unfortunately, there seem to be few /completed/, and high-quality texts available. It is certainly a shame that there is not a modern, high-quality book about OS development (that I know of), but the motivated student can certainly find the needed information. Good luck and have fun!

Re: The little book about OS development

#42

Post by sasas »

samwilliams wrote: post #37
metaobject wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your research project sounds interesting. Is there any info you can share (white paper, etc)?

Thanks! At the moment, the best source of information is the talk I gave at the Erlang User Conference 2016 [0]. Four papers and a thesis are in the pipeline for next year, though! I will update the site once PDFs of those are available. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9XqHiumZ02E

Thanks for sharing, really enjoyed the video. Isn't it amazing that Ericsson were achieving nine 9's (31.5 milliseconds downtime per year) [1], using Erlang in the AXD switch back in 1998 [2].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_availability#Percentage_c...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erlang_(programming_language)#...

Re: The little book about OS development

#43

Post by qwertyuiop924 »

spc476 wrote: post #36
qwertyuiop924 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See? that's fascinating . My unix box handles the day-to-day, but the future is coming, and I can't wait .

That particular future has been around for 25 years.

That one has been, yes. Others have not.

Re: The little book about OS development

#44

Post by qwertyuiop924 »

nickpsecurity wrote: post #39
spc476 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, there's Synthesis OS ( http://valerieaurora.org/synthesis/SynthesisOS/ ), a "just in time" operating system that can recompile itself on the fly to provide customized system calls.

The funny thing is I was going ro reply to qwerty with that exact OS but thought it's shown up in comments too often. So, I didnt. Then it still surprises people when you do. Maybe I need to keep posting it when people ask these questions if it consistently has such an effect. Maybe see about getting the author over here too while we're at it.

It never showed up when I was browsing HN...

>Maybe I need to keep posting it when people ask these questions if it consistently has such an effect

That's what I do. It seems to usually work.

Re: The little book about OS development

#46

Post by JdeBP »

formula1 wrote: post #9
fuball63 wrote: post #5

Other than the educational value of doing so, what would be a reason to write a brand new operating system? Obviously there is a lot to learn about existing operating systems by coding you own, much in the way that writing a new languages teaches you about existing languages, but what are some creative applications of a hand made operating system?

I know Ive wanted to make changes to my own for a while. At very least default ui, menus and shortcuts after installation. These are modtly ux changes though Additionally theres a few features I would prefer from a security user experience standpoint - symlinks are indexed anD the move or deletion of the target would trigger a "would you like to change/delete the symlink as well?" - all applications run in a containe…

Starting from scratch is one way to achieve this. But I suggest that you look into the GNU Hurd if starting from scratch seems daunting. Its potential is underused by the likes of Arch Hurd and Debian Hurd. One of the things that it can do is substitute user-supplied intermediaries, for just about anything, for selected processes.
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