6 ms·

Hobby kernel and userspace, built mostly from scratch

154 points by carlesfe 12y ago

billconan 12y ago
how does it provide the opengl driver?
- lamacase 12y ago
  "The following external libraries and tools are retrieved during the build process: ... Mesa - Implementation of OpenGL (only the software rasterizer is available)." From the readme
hvs 12y ago
Back when I went to UIUC the SIGOps chapter had a "Roll Your Own Operating System" series (mid-90's)[1]. I'm glad to see they are still doing interesting things. [1] Still available: http://www.acm.uiuc.edu/sigops/roll_your_own/ http://www.acm.uiuc.edu/sigops/roll_your_own/
jonasmalaco 12y ago
I found the Bim editor interesting; particularity for the simplicity of its implementation.
StandardFuture 12y ago
Hehe, I have talked to Kevin on irc before about his custom compositor. He hangs out on the freenode irc channel #osdev sometimes, iirc. Really nice dude. I am very surprised this hasn't already been submitted here before. :)
sand500 12y ago
Is ToAru-OS a reference to raildex?
- delluminatus 12y ago
  I would love that. But "to aru" also actually means something in Japanese, which I would translate like, "there is an". Disclaimer: I definitely am not an expert on Japanese. It's actually kind of hard to translate concisely, IMO the phrase that best captures the meaning of "ToAru-OS" is "There exists an OS". But it's kind of awkward. If we used the Raildex translation, ToAru-OS would be "A Certain OS".
  - gh02t 12y ago
    Yeah, I think something along the lines of "an existant OS" is an acceptable translation. "To aru" has a subtle connotation implying that it is a standalone thing in its own regard. It's a pretty clever name for a hobby project like this, IMO.
  - byuu 12y ago
    Sorry for going off-topic here to the thread, but ... As someone studying the language, can you explain what the と portion of the name means? I am aware of the ある (有る) portion, "to exist", and that と is being used here to represent a clause, eg "Xと言った" (X said), "Xと思った" (X thought). But in this case, there's nothing before とある, so why say と at all in this case? Why not just say あるOS?
    - delluminatus 12y ago
      I think it's stylistic. The anime series (To aru majutsu no index) uses the same style of "to aru <noun>" instead of "<noun> to aru". It reminds me of Latin, where you can adjust the position of phrases in the sentence for emphasis or rhythm. Personally, I think of the "to" as emphasizing the specificity of the phrase, if that makes sense. It's not just that "an OS", it's this specific OS that's being referenced by "aru".
      - byuu 12y ago
        Ah, most interesting. Didn't think you were allowed to ever move "X to <verb>" to "to <verb> X", but great to know that this happens. Thank you for the explanation!
- Manger 12y ago
  According to the FAQ on the wiki, the developper is a fan of one of A Certain Scientific Railgun. https://github.com/klange/toaruos/wiki/FAQs https://github.com/klange/toaruos/wiki/FAQs
throwaway234 12y ago
He would spend so much time in the UIUC ACM office working on that thing. Pretty impressive for an undergrad ;)
yazaddaruvala 12y ago
Anyone with this type of hobby kernel experience, how hard would it be to build the "Ruby on Rails" or "NodeJS" of kernels? If hard, why so difficult? I'm more referring to a theoretical reason, rather than practical. Practical Reasons: - drivers are required - C/ASM is hard (ie lack of contributors) - different hardware architectures need to be supported. That part I get. Why in theory can you not have an operating system framework that allows people to "relatively easily" build a custom kernel (instead of using Linux) the same way something like Go allows me to "relatively easily" build a custom HTTP server (instead of using Apache)?
- wcummings 12y ago
  I used to hang on some hobby osdev boards many years ago (losethos was there, when it was still called losethosOS). I never got much further than loading the kernel, setting up protected mode, printing some text and so on, but it was an interesting crowd. The long story short is, building a day-to-day usable general purpose kernel from scratch, alone, is next to impossible. First have to decouple Go from its runtime before you could build a kernel in it, not to mention everything else that goes w/ writing a kernel. Similarly, you can't use significant parts of C++ when building a kernel w/ it. It seems like a lot of people are looking at Rust as a system programming language, though... (google rust kernel)
- dschatz 12y ago
  You can look at OSkit as one attempt to do this. I think the overwhelming reason its not common is that no one wants to build an OS. If they do it's for the educational experience not practical use. This means hobbyists aren't interested in just using a framework.
  - qznc 12y ago
    I am not sure what exactly is meant by "Ruby on Rails of kernel". Probably "an opinionated framework to build your own kernel". In this case OSkit is probably the best answer to the question. Maybe look at micro- and exokernels.
    - 12y ago
marknadal 12y ago
This is amazing! I've been dying lately feeling an overwhelming sense of disappointment with modern day OSs and their UX. To the point where I've wanted to start to play around with making my own. Could anybody point me in the right direction? I'm a NodeJS web developer HTML/CSS guy. What would be the shortest/fastest path to me being able to write my own entirely custom UX? Preferably something I could do in HTML/CSS/JS and be able to run on a desktop/laptop/phone. Thanks.
- samwilliams 12y ago
  If you want to create your own complete graphical rendering system you could look into writing a replacement for X11. You could look at the source of tinyx to help you get started. Note that the 'tiny' x source is 5mb of plaintext. You could also look at building a graphical tool-kit (think GTK/QT) that can be used to render windows and their styling. Finally, you could look at building a window manager with a bunch of applications which look the way you would like it to. This is probably the most achievable goal, but it also offers you the least flexibility with your rendering. A couple of other points: - I would definitely recommend targeting a non-mac *nix environment. My understanding of the situation is that on Mac and Windows their is little support for external renderers and basically none for custom window managers. - Most people would consider JS is to be a pretty bad language to write one of these systems in. You will be able to use JS as the end user application programming interface if you like (a la Gnome 3), but you will likely have a tough time writing any of the three systems mentioned above in pure JS. HTML and CSS will likely only be useful for the front-end that you expose to the end users. Finally, > What would be the shortest/fastest path to me being able to write my own entirely custom UX? In the field of hobby OS/systems programming the 'shortest and fastest' route is a very bad attitude to take. Building anything in this area takes time and patience, if you skim on either of these you likely won't get far. I hope this is helpful -- good luck! Sam
- pjc50 12y ago
  complete graphical rendering system You can get a lot smaller than 5mb source on that if you're willing to ditch the X protocol. You'd end up with something like RiscOS, Amiga Workbench, PC GEM, or very early MacOS. > shortest/fastest path to me being able to write my own entirely custom UX Take your existing windowing environment and language tooling and ask it for a fullscreen framebuffer. Draw in that. You can be up and running in minutes. > Preferably something I could do in HTML/CSS/JS and be able to run on a desktop/laptop/phone .. oh. That requires an entire pile of browser machinery and is very far from 'bare metal'. Fullscreen node-webkit?

154 points by carlesfe 12y ago

billconan 12y ago

how does it provide the opengl driver?

lamacase 12y ago
"The following external libraries and tools are retrieved during the build process: ... Mesa - Implementation of OpenGL (only the software rasterizer is available)." From the readme

hvs 12y ago

Back when I went to UIUC the SIGOps chapter had a "Roll Your Own Operating System" series (mid-90's)[1]. I'm glad to see they are still doing interesting things. [1] Still available: http://www.acm.uiuc.edu/sigops/roll_your_own/ http://www.acm.uiuc.edu/sigops/roll_your_own/

jonasmalaco 12y ago

I found the Bim editor interesting; particularity for the simplicity of its implementation.

StandardFuture 12y ago

Hehe, I have talked to Kevin on irc before about his custom compositor. He hangs out on the freenode irc channel #osdev sometimes, iirc. Really nice dude. I am very surprised this hasn't already been submitted here before. :)

sand500 12y ago

Is ToAru-OS a reference to raildex?

delluminatus 12y ago
I would love that. But "to aru" also actually means something in Japanese, which I would translate like, "there is an". Disclaimer: I definitely am not an expert on Japanese. It's actually kind of hard to translate concisely, IMO the phrase that best captures the meaning of "ToAru-OS" is "There exists an OS". But it's kind of awkward. If we used the Raildex translation, ToAru-OS would be "A Certain OS".
- gh02t 12y ago
  Yeah, I think something along the lines of "an existant OS" is an acceptable translation. "To aru" has a subtle connotation implying that it is a standalone thing in its own regard. It's a pretty clever name for a hobby project like this, IMO.
- byuu 12y ago
  Sorry for going off-topic here to the thread, but ... As someone studying the language, can you explain what the と portion of the name means? I am aware of the ある (有る) portion, "to exist", and that と is being used here to represent a clause, eg "Xと言った" (X said), "Xと思った" (X thought). But in this case, there's nothing before とある, so why say と at all in this case? Why not just say あるOS?
  - delluminatus 12y ago
    I think it's stylistic. The anime series (To aru majutsu no index) uses the same style of "to aru <noun>" instead of "<noun> to aru". It reminds me of Latin, where you can adjust the position of phrases in the sentence for emphasis or rhythm. Personally, I think of the "to" as emphasizing the specificity of the phrase, if that makes sense. It's not just that "an OS", it's this specific OS that's being referenced by "aru".
    - byuu 12y ago
      Ah, most interesting. Didn't think you were allowed to ever move "X to <verb>" to "to <verb> X", but great to know that this happens. Thank you for the explanation!
Manger 12y ago
According to the FAQ on the wiki, the developper is a fan of one of A Certain Scientific Railgun. https://github.com/klange/toaruos/wiki/FAQs https://github.com/klange/toaruos/wiki/FAQs

throwaway234 12y ago

He would spend so much time in the UIUC ACM office working on that thing. Pretty impressive for an undergrad ;)

yazaddaruvala 12y ago

Anyone with this type of hobby kernel experience, how hard would it be to build the "Ruby on Rails" or "NodeJS" of kernels? If hard, why so difficult? I'm more referring to a theoretical reason, rather than practical. Practical Reasons: - drivers are required - C/ASM is hard (ie lack of contributors) - different hardware architectures need to be supported. That part I get. Why in theory can you not have an operating system framework that allows people to "relatively easily" build a custom kernel (instead of using Linux) the same way something like Go allows me to "relatively easily" build a custom HTTP server (instead of using Apache)?

wcummings 12y ago
I used to hang on some hobby osdev boards many years ago (losethos was there, when it was still called losethosOS). I never got much further than loading the kernel, setting up protected mode, printing some text and so on, but it was an interesting crowd. The long story short is, building a day-to-day usable general purpose kernel from scratch, alone, is next to impossible. First have to decouple Go from its runtime before you could build a kernel in it, not to mention everything else that goes w/ writing a kernel. Similarly, you can't use significant parts of C++ when building a kernel w/ it. It seems like a lot of people are looking at Rust as a system programming language, though... (google rust kernel)
dschatz 12y ago
You can look at OSkit as one attempt to do this. I think the overwhelming reason its not common is that no one wants to build an OS. If they do it's for the educational experience not practical use. This means hobbyists aren't interested in just using a framework.
- qznc 12y ago
  I am not sure what exactly is meant by "Ruby on Rails of kernel". Probably "an opinionated framework to build your own kernel". In this case OSkit is probably the best answer to the question. Maybe look at micro- and exokernels.
  - 12y ago

marknadal 12y ago

This is amazing! I've been dying lately feeling an overwhelming sense of disappointment with modern day OSs and their UX. To the point where I've wanted to start to play around with making my own. Could anybody point me in the right direction? I'm a NodeJS web developer HTML/CSS guy. What would be the shortest/fastest path to me being able to write my own entirely custom UX? Preferably something I could do in HTML/CSS/JS and be able to run on a desktop/laptop/phone. Thanks.

samwilliams 12y ago
If you want to create your own complete graphical rendering system you could look into writing a replacement for X11. You could look at the source of tinyx to help you get started. Note that the 'tiny' x source is 5mb of plaintext. You could also look at building a graphical tool-kit (think GTK/QT) that can be used to render windows and their styling. Finally, you could look at building a window manager with a bunch of applications which look the way you would like it to. This is probably the most achievable goal, but it also offers you the least flexibility with your rendering. A couple of other points: - I would definitely recommend targeting a non-mac *nix environment. My understanding of the situation is that on Mac and Windows their is little support for external renderers and basically none for custom window managers. - Most people would consider JS is to be a pretty bad language to write one of these systems in. You will be able to use JS as the end user application programming interface if you like (a la Gnome 3), but you will likely have a tough time writing any of the three systems mentioned above in pure JS. HTML and CSS will likely only be useful for the front-end that you expose to the end users. Finally, > What would be the shortest/fastest path to me being able to write my own entirely custom UX? In the field of hobby OS/systems programming the 'shortest and fastest' route is a very bad attitude to take. Building anything in this area takes time and patience, if you skim on either of these you likely won't get far. I hope this is helpful -- good luck! Sam
pjc50 12y ago
complete graphical rendering system You can get a lot smaller than 5mb source on that if you're willing to ditch the X protocol. You'd end up with something like RiscOS, Amiga Workbench, PC GEM, or very early MacOS. > shortest/fastest path to me being able to write my own entirely custom UX Take your existing windowing environment and language tooling and ask it for a fullscreen framebuffer. Draw in that. You can be up and running in minutes. > Preferably something I could do in HTML/CSS/JS and be able to run on a desktop/laptop/phone .. oh. That requires an entire pile of browser machinery and is very far from 'bare metal'. Fullscreen node-webkit?