Great excuse to rewrite user-space utilities - https://github.com/mit-pdos/xv6-riscv/tree/riscv/user
Xv6, a simple Unix-like teaching operating system
11–20 of 23 posts
Re: Xv6, a simple Unix-like teaching operating system
#12Formerly: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22511569 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17592560 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10566312 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7558081 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6971127 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3753216 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2335824
Interesting, you'd think this didn't meet the "significant new development" criteria to be trending that many times.
Also isn't stuff about UNIX popular?
Re: Xv6, a simple Unix-like teaching operating system
#13My OS class that I'm currently taking sues Xv6 as a base for learning about OS implementation. The documentation is great and it clocks in under 10K lines if I'm remembering correctly. I'm really enjoyed working with it in class so far.
Re: Xv6, a simple Unix-like teaching operating system
#14Are there any other good minimal teaching operating systems out there? Unix-like or not.
Re: Xv6, a simple Unix-like teaching operating system
#15Are there any other good minimal teaching operating systems out there? Unix-like or not.
MINIX before version 3. There are books by Tanenbaum (and I think others?) that use it to teach operating system design and development.
Re: Xv6, a simple Unix-like teaching operating system
#16Are there any other good minimal teaching operating systems out there? Unix-like or not.
Windows NT was used in my university's Operating System course (in 2010).
Re: Xv6, a simple Unix-like teaching operating system
#17Are there any other good minimal teaching operating systems out there? Unix-like or not.
MINIX before version 3. There are books by Tanenbaum (and I think others?) that use it to teach operating system design and development.
Even Minix 3 is fairly small. "Operating Systems: Design and Implementation" was synced with Minix 3 in its latest edition (2006). It's all the crud in later releases where things started getting junked up, after Tanenbaum got a windfall of cash, gave his students the keys to the kingdom, so they ended up importing large parts of NetBSD, sloppily. Say hello to 3-hour build times and a codebase that no one contributes to anymore.
Re: Xv6, a simple Unix-like teaching operating system
#18This is super interesting -- for folks who are worked on or with this, what makes Xv6 well-suited for teaching OS concepts? What aspects of the OS are less robust / filled out than a standard Linux or BSD distro? I'm curious about the pedagogical considerations behind this OS.
Years ago I took 6.828 at MIT which is an operating systems engineering course for which Xv6 was designed. The part I found most useful as a student was the fact that the entire operating system printed out into a nice slim volume. Many significant subroutines fit entirely on one page. To sum up the pedagogical value: Xv6 is an operating system made as simple as possible, but not simpler.
After this course I able to translate the skills to real world results in include a small contribution to the Linux kernel, as well as a significant non-public Linux kernel module. I can recommend studying the Xv6 source code and accompanying book to anyone, without reservation. It was a great privilege to have been able to take that class.
Re: Xv6, a simple Unix-like teaching operating system
#19Looks like this was recently re-written for RISC-V. Maybe it should be called Rv6 now.
Or maybe they can rename the arch to RIXV6 now.
Re: Xv6, a simple Unix-like teaching operating system
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
MINIX before version 3. There are books by Tanenbaum (and I think others?) that use it to teach operating system design and development.
Even Minix 3 is fairly small. "Operating Systems: Design and Implementation" was synced with Minix 3 in its latest edition (2006). It's all the crud in later releases where things started getting junked up, after Tanenbaum got a windfall of cash, gave his students the keys to the kingdom, so they ended up importing large parts of NetBSD, sloppily. Say hello to 3-hour build times and a codebase that no one contributes…
Yeah after I read OSTEP and felt like I understood xv6 enough I tried to move on to minix 3 and reading tanenbaums book. I couldn't do it. There was just so much going on.