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FlingOS: An educational operating system
- krat0sprakhar 11y agoAn operating system written in C#! Interesting - http://www.flingos.co.uk/docs/reference/Why-CSharp/ http://www.flingos.co.uk/docs/reference/Why-CSharp/
- Zekio 11y agoIt reminds me of the one Microsoft made, but we can actually play around with it :) And this one probably isn't multi-threading everywhere. EDIT: surprisingly easy to setup in a VM EDIT 2: I suck at this apparently already made it freeze..
- kaushiks 11y agoMicrosoft's research OS was called Singularity [1] and the C# compiler (that compiled to native code) Bartok [2]. [1] http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/projects/singularity/ http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/projects/singularity/ [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bartok_(compiler) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bartok_(compiler)
- michel-slm 11y agoSingularity was later extended by the joint MS-MSR project Midori, which sadly was discontinued last year. Apparently some features are being incorporated into C#. Joe Duffy is blogging about his experience: http://joeduffyblog.com/2015/11/03/blogging-about-midori/ http://joeduffyblog.com/2015/11/03/blogging-about-midori/
- EdNutting 11y agoApologies, I committed to master instead of develop last night which caused a regression (we've just implemented a new scheduler). We'll be back to working order soon enough :)
- EdNutting 11y agoMaster should now be stable such that the console appears and you can type into it. You should also be able to Alt+Tab between the two shells. Please note though, the codebase has been being transformed for the past 2 months and there's more work still to do which means most of the disk, file system and PCI stuff is unstable (related commands will cause the OS to freeze, crash or similar). We expect to be back to full functionality by March.
- marvy 11y agoMy first reaction was: how can that possibly work? I read the entire "why c#" page in the hopes of getting an answer, but it just kept going on about other stuff. Finally, at the end, under "Disadvantages of c#": requires a custom compiler. Which indeed eliminates my objection!
- EdNutting 11y agoInteresting to read your comment - I'll update the article to make the information more readily available. Cheers, Ed
- marvy 11y agoJust add a link to the "how c#" somewhere; I didn't notice that page existed. It's exactly what I wanted! edit: oh, you did already. never mind!
- marvy 11y agoIn case you're still checking these comments: do you think FlingOS is a good fit for someone who is comfortable with C, or would they be better off with something like xv6?
- EdNutting 11y agoOur articles and videos are largely language independent so still contain a lot of very valuable information for any OS developer, irrespective of language. I would say our codebase is useful for seeing how to make the various drivers work but that someone comfortable in C ought to develop in C and simply refer to our code when/if they get stuck.
- marvy 11y agoCool, thanks!!
- EdNutting 11y agoWe'll add more detail in future but here's a brief article covering the key points: http://flingos.co.uk/docs/reference/How-CSharp/ http://flingos.co.uk/docs/reference/How-CSharp/ I've also added a sentence to the Introduction section of the Why C# article linking to this How C# article.
- empressplay 11y ago"Educational operating system" makes me think of an OS that's designed for delivering educational content, not one that's an example operating system for learning bare-metal coding. I wonder if "model" might be a better word to use.
- shadowcodex 11y agoI agree as I was slightly mislead by the title. Very cool project though!!!
- xfitm3 11y agoI didn't make that connection at all. I was fully expecting an OS to teach me about bare metal programming semantics.
- marvy 11y agoshadowcodex: your comment is showing as "dead".
- EdNutting 11y agoThis is an interesting issue - how people interpet the name seems to come out 50/50 between "OS for learning OS dev" and "OS for educational content". In my experience, people's backgrounds are the biggest factor affecting which they think of. We're reluctant to go with "model" OS or similar because we're not actually implementing anything like an ideal OS - we don't use optimised algorithms for example. The idea being that you can learn/teach the OS concept using a simple implementation (and readable code) and then students/developers can optimise as an exercise/extension/for a real OS. So it's not a "model" OS but is an "example" OS to use to teach the key concepts. Unfortunately, "example" OS leads people to think our OS is practical as a basis for a real OS, which it isn't and we don't want to give the impression we're trying to rival Linux/Windows/OSX/etc. No name seems to give a universally correct and good first impression!
- michel-slm 11y agoAs someone who has taken an advanced OS class that involves implementing portions of such an educational / teaching OS, I also perceive "educational" to mean "for learning OS dev". The other side of the spectrum for me is "research" and "proof of concept" OSes though - like House (written in Haskell) or Singularity and Midori.
- vmorgulis 11y agoThe author was looking for money to help the project a month ago: https://www.reddit.com/r/osdev/comments/3upyvq/would_you_support_a_flingos_kickstarter/ https://www.reddit.com/r/osdev/comments/3upyvq/would_you_sup...
- 1971genocide 11y agoEven though Ed has a really cool project I am guessing since he does not have a business model it must be hard for him to work on it :( Unless he figures out how to convince people who are : 1| C# Developers 2| Interested in OS development To give him money for his work its going to be a tough sell - sadly.
- EdNutting 11y agoYou've very much hit the nail on the head. However, though it's hard, it's not impossible - we've got some magic (read as: not suitable for a public forum) in the business pipeline that should keep this project alive. If all goes well, we'll have a lot to shout about in a couple of months time. Until then, we're still welcoming sponsorship or donations! If nothing else, the project remains open source for anyone to contribute to. Cheers, Ed
- Adam89 11y agoI've been thinking about teaching myself low level development and FlingOS is just what I've been looking for. If these resources work out well, I'd be willing to pay you for them :)
- wrong_variable 11y agoI really hope you are successful ! I have been stalking your work for a while :D Have you tried talking to local schools ? They seem really good target audience - with a lot of money actually. I am also interested OS dev but I had nightmarish experience with C# while working at BRL. I too am from UoB ( Eng Maths ) - graduated recently. Its funny how much CS people are always browsing HN lol
- superskierpat 11y agoI like these kinds of projects, but have thus far been unlucky with mono projects on linux.. I might try it out anyways.
- EdNutting 11y agoCompile our compiler against XBuild and apparently it works (according to one Reddit user). Unlikely to work with MonoDevelops default/old compiler.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- EdNutting 11y agoThanks for the share! This is really valuable for the project and has given us great feedback and positive messages.
- muazzam 11y agoGreat! Keep it up.
- EdNutting 11y agoThanks!
- pjmlp 11y agoAfter the Oberon derived OSes from ETHZ there is hardly any university pursuing OS research in memory safe languages, so congratulations on the work achieved so far.