51–60 of 63 posts
This is mostly a note to myself. It's interesting to consider "what next" once an OS project reaches this stage. There are soo many directions a team can take, but also, none of those direction lead to a clear path towards massive user adoption. There are obvious holes/gaps in what mainstream OSes offer today, however it is not clear how a project goes from here to addressing those gaps, and even if those were to be…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
and since i dont trust windows to host my work os securely, and performance of games would be abysmal with the hosting roles reversed, what i really need is 2 boxes and a kvm switch!. the question now becomes, are there physical systems that turn on and off at the same time... i.e. share a psu but host different os's! suppose i could build my own am i looking at building a rack mounted system? heh, think i just found…
You can avoid the kvm with a cheap USB switch and software. https://github.com/haimgel/display-switch
Earlier quoted context omitted.
rather than displace mainstream os's what id rather have is some way to easily switch os depending on my task, gaming? windows, anything else? linux (for now), and have that run directly on the hardware with little interference... like a meta task switcher os. someone is going to come on here and tell me we already have this (i hope). ive been out of computing for so long i dont know if this reliably exists, but back…
A hypervisor does what you want, though note that the low level ones that run as the OS are generally geared towards servers, not desktops
people always say that C++ is not a good fit for kernels, but so far this is the only language I know where small teams or individuals are regularly able to create non-trivial hobby OSes from scratch that go from zero to GUI: - Serenity ( https://github.com/SerenityOS/serenity ) - not really a small team, but it managed to get to GUI as pretty much a one-man-show - Skift ( https://github.com/skift-org/skift ) - hhu:…
HelenOS[1] is in C and has a GUI. I don’t know how many people participated over its (quite extensive) history. Axle[2] is a one-man project with a GUI that the author has been gradually transitioning from C to Rust. Among C++ projects, I think Essence[3] also merits a mention. [1] http://www.helenos.org/ [2] https://github.com/codyd51/axle [3] https://gitlab.com/nakst/essence
Apparently very little past discussion: Managarm: August 2022 Update - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32515546 - Aug 2022 (3 comments) The Managarm Operating System - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24689727 - Oct 2020 (1 comment)
The github repo was updated just 5 days back. Not sure what the state was previously, so not much discussion.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
HelenOS[1] is in C and has a GUI. I don’t know how many people participated over its (quite extensive) history. Axle[2] is a one-man project with a GUI that the author has been gradually transitioning from C to Rust. Among C++ projects, I think Essence[3] also merits a mention. [1] http://www.helenos.org/ [2] https://github.com/codyd51/axle [3] https://gitlab.com/nakst/essence
Hi, author of axle here - thank you for the shout out! It’s been a wonderfully fun and enriching project to work on over the years. I’m now working on XNU at Apple, so won’t be working further on axle for the foreseeable future.
people always say that C++ is not a good fit for kernels, but so far this is the only language I know where small teams or individuals are regularly able to create non-trivial hobby OSes from scratch that go from zero to GUI: - Serenity ( https://github.com/SerenityOS/serenity ) - not really a small team, but it managed to get to GUI as pretty much a one-man-show - Skift ( https://github.com/skift-org/skift ) - hhu:…
You are seeing a creation date bias. And it doesn't help that there just aren't that many systems programming languages. Until Rust in 2010, there basically was almost no motion in the "system programming space". Even afterward, there needs to be enough uptake to actually have critical mass. Only then can people start using it for projects. Side note: D actually predates a lot of this by being from 2001, but, sadly,…
people always say that C++ is not a good fit for kernels, but so far this is the only language I know where small teams or individuals are regularly able to create non-trivial hobby OSes from scratch that go from zero to GUI: - Serenity ( https://github.com/SerenityOS/serenity ) - not really a small team, but it managed to get to GUI as pretty much a one-man-show - Skift ( https://github.com/skift-org/skift ) - hhu:…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is the kernel really the differentiator there? seL4 is a Proven microkernel that is some 9000 lines of C. This ancient SO post[0] claims Linux is 140k lines. The kernel is just a tiny component of the many things required to get an OS up and running. I suspect most projects just peter out as the enormity of the complexity becomes apparent. [0] https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/223746/why-is-the-l...
That's just the architecture and driver independent part of the kernel. The kernel source tree is 15M lines or so.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's just the architecture and driver independent part of the kernel. The kernel source tree is 15M lines or so.
I’d love to know what the smallest OS is that can boot on an old MacBook, get to network (wired or wireless), and includes a basic browser (tui or gui) even if it doesn’t drive all the onboard hardware. That feels like it would be an excellent learning platform.
https://crackberry.com/heres-how-qnx-looked-1999-running-144...
These days, most people would run it in qemu, e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xqILeQ-Cg-A