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I'd be interested, but how about doing one for x64 assembly? There are already two teaching kernels available for x86 (from MIT and Stanford). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xv6 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pintos I think Minix is also x86, so that may be 3.
Why not, the more knowledge the better.
I concur with HN reader: chubot, some x64 knowledge would be useful.
1. http://www.quora.com/How-do-I-write-an-operating-system
2. http://www.quora.com/If-you-were-to-write-a-new-operating-sy...
3. http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/~exr/lectures/opsys/10_11/lectures/...
4. http://www.amazon.com/The-Design-UNIX-Operating-System/dp/01...
5. http://www.amazon.com/The-Elements-Computing-Systems-Princip...
I'd be interested, but how about doing one for x64 assembly? There are already two teaching kernels available for x86 (from MIT and Stanford). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xv6 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pintos I think Minix is also x86, so that may be 3.
Or possibly even ARM? Isn't it supposed to have simpler assembly (better for learning) and many, cheap, accessible boards to learn with?
When I studied at UT, the OS course lets you build an OS. It was brutal. 80 hour per week brutal. But what I took away from the course is not the class notes but really the Prof/TA comments when we used to come up with design issues when we fucked up lower abstraction layers or subtle, really really subtle bugs that were introduced at previous levels.
To be honest, I am not sure how that would be replicable in book form if not accompanied by a teacher. Either you are so vague that people muddle, then google and your book is effectively useless. Or you are so prescriptive that people end up reading a floor plan to build an OS and get squat out of it.
Trying to include C and assembly in there with the rest of it is ambitious, so if you van do that successfully it might be worthwhile. But we don't really need another book that reiterates the old concepts of what an operating system is. We need people to build new operating systems with fundamental design changes to the core model of what an operating system is that take into account new developments in computing. The biggest development I think is open source. So I would start with that as an assumption for my OS and question other premises. For example I think that virtual memory should probably be eliminated or replaced with another concept.
You might be better off targeting the Raspberry Pi instead of x86. Or maybe in addition to x86 as a section on cross-platform development. But I would definitely be interested in it even if it only focused on x86.