Roll your own toy UNIX-clone OS

My Op Sys class in school was designed around compiling your own toy 'unix' kernel and rewriting large portions of it from scratch for educational reasons. We used the Tanenbaum book and his "Minix" system. It was far and away the most informative class I had in school.

Re: Roll your own toy UNIX-clone OS

#9

Post by ghotli » Sun, Jan 16, 2011, 5:18 AM UTC

The step up from this is Linux From Scratch. As a teenager, starting with a host os and loading the individual pieces of a functional linux distribution taught me a skill that has turned out to be very valuable.

Whereas the link above will help you learn the innards of a kernel, this will help you understand what packages on top of that make a functional, useful system.

http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/

Re: Roll your own toy UNIX-clone OS

#10

Post by derleth » Sun, Jan 16, 2011, 6:37 AM UTC

tseabrooks wrote: post #8

My Op Sys class in school was designed around compiling your own toy 'unix' kernel and rewriting large portions of it from scratch for educational reasons. We used the Tanenbaum book and his "Minix" system. It was far and away the most informative class I had in school.

> We used the Tanenbaum book and his "Minix" system.

The 'problem' with this, if you want to approach it that way, is that Minix is not representative of how most OSes in the real world work: It's a microkernel in a world of monolithic kernels, which means studying it to learn how the rest of the OS world works is a bit like looking at electric engines to figure out how your gas-powered car runs on the inside.

(There's also the jibe that microkernels are the wave of the future, and always will be.)