can an os be wrritten in 6 months time

[AVINASH]

hi my name is avinash.

i am in my 4th year cs .

i would like to write a simple os and i have about 6mts time

for development . People here in india claim its not possible to develop a full working os ?

is this true ?

i have a background knowledge of

c/c++
little bit of asm
8086 internals .

can the above task be done in 6mts ..

avinash.s
e-mail;=) [email protected]

[Kenneth Garin]

It depends on what you want your OS to do. Im sure it could be programmed in 6 months but if your a beginner then it could take more time just to learn how to program it before you even touch a compiler/assembler. Learning always takes longer then the programming in this case. Within 6 months you could learn about pmode and asm and all that is needed to do this and still be able to program a full OS but the question is- how much time a day do you have to work on it?
If you have at least 5-7 hours a day to work on your OS then you could have something made in a lot less time then 6 months!
KG.

[BLoggins02]

I certainly thinks it's possible. ?Look at the OS I'm writing (http://bloggins02.freeservers.com). ?I started from complete scratch and I've only been working on it for two weeks and it already has multitasking, keyboard handlers, video routines, etc... ?That two weeks includes the learning curve of getting back into assembler and getting oriented with the whole process. ?Just to give you an idea, I hope to have virtual memory (paging) implemented within a month. ?Now I'm sure in six months it won't exactly be Windows or Linux but I'm fairly impressed and surprised by how much I'm able to get done. ?I do work very hard on it though and I'm definately learning as I go. ?I probably spend anywhere from 2 to 6 hours on the OS per day but I really love what I'm doing and I love learning about this stuff so I don't even notice the time. ?And this is even in pure assembly and I'm not trying to reimplement some well known system (like UNIX) so I could almost guarantee you that if you were to code most of it in C and made it based mostly on an existing system you could have something quite respectable in 6 months.

Besides, no Operating System is ever really "finished" anyway ?;D

Breckin

[Peter_Vigren]

Your name is Avinash? Pretty cool name

Yes, you can write an OS on 6 months... If you have the knowledge of course (and the patience)... How long it takes is up to how fast you learn and how simple the OS will be.

And besides, there is the saying "Nothing is impossible"...

[Jinxi]

I'm Jinxi, 16 years old. I have programmed in perl and visualbasic and a litle c++. I want learn how to write my own operating system. can I do it? Is there a website to teach me?

Thanks
J.Cheng

[yzhu]

Maybe you can use the OSKit to simplify your OS development.

OSKit can be found here: http://www.cs.utah.edu/flux/oskit/

[Jordan_C.]

How does that OS kit thing work? I can't find out a single thing. Maybe it's that I'm not reading the foot-long paragraph on the main page. Anyone have a..er, whats-the-word? Summery?

[dhanush]

Hi avinaash
ur name seems that u r in south and fourth sem shows u r studying engg . if its so i'm happy to see some one from around me.

U can design an OS in less than 3 months but
do u know
1.asm (r) inline asm with c
2.have u
i) Decided ur OS design
ii) studied intel386 text
iii) gathered all hardware manuals

[GLneo]

very easy in 6 months (mine is only 4 months old, and i started with no knowledge of any hardware or asm) but depends on what you consiter "full working" hello, world or windows clone?

p.s. this post is 4 years old

[Dex4u]

You can Rip a OS in 6 months yes , make one no.

[GLneo]

what are you talking about!!!, it's easy if you have good resourses and tech speks!

[NotTheCHEAT]

Depends by what you mean by "make" an OS. QDOS was supposedly made in two man-months. But the very name Quick-And-Dirty-OS implies that it was sorta thrown together, or as Dex4u put it, ripped.

Note that using the Utah OS Dev Kit would mean you aren't making "your" OS, you're throwing some procedure calls in together with some pre-made and pre-compiled code that many other kernels have used. That's like making an OS in BASIC:

Code: Select all

do
  managememory
  multitask
  checkiftheusertypedanything
loop

except in C.

Dex4u is right: you can't make an OS in 6 months, but you can rip one. You can write some fairly loserish code in 6 months, or you can spend years producing top notch code. Of course, it isn't very likely that you'll make money (like Bill Gates) or become famous (like Bill Gates and Linus Torvalds).
If you're going to spend that much time OS Deving, you should know that it IS a thankless job. Hope I didn't discourage you too much

[GLneo]

my OS is built from scratch and is made off the finest code >:(

[NotTheCHEAT]

Yeah, I'm sure. It would rival Windows or Linux. But there will always be modifications to make. Optimizations, debugging, etc. Also,

Besides, no Operating System is ever really "finished" anyway ;D

Look at linux! Look at Windows (Windows will NEVER be finished, not even if they have everyone in the world working on it... lol)!
Even if you have a quick-and-dirty-OS, it isn't finished, and it'll be forever until it is. Since hardware evolves, software must evolve to compensate for it. If there were no 386, no 4 GB memory, there would be no Windows or linux, and everyone would be using DOS or Minix! And even those must be constantly changing, so they do not end up like DOS or Minix (forgotten and abandoned, by all but the strangest hackers, like myself). An OS is never finished, and to say that you can finish an OS in 6 months or less is preposterous!

Do you think your OS will be finished in 6 months or less?

On a lighter note, isn't it funny how such an old thread can begin flame wars?

[Brendan]

Hi,

i would like to write a simple os and i have about 6mts time

for development . People here in india claim its not possible to develop a full working os ?

is this true ?

i have a background knowledge of

c/c++
little bit of asm
8086 internals .

can the above task be done in 6mts ..

Hmmm. What do you call a "full working OS"?

An simplified version of DOS that only works on some 80x86 computers could be done in a couple of weeks, but for a full OS like Linux or Windows you could spend 6 months on the GUI alone (without boot code, a kernel, proper device detection or device drivers), and still not finish it.

Another question would be what will happen to the OS after you've completed university. If the OS is only for your course and you've got no intention of continuing the OS after your course is finished, then anything that responds to the keyboard might do - if you try anything large and you'll lose the necessary enthusiasm.

If you intend to continue the OS's development after your course is completed, then you'll want to do things properly. In this case I strongly suggest that you do not write an OS. Instead, write boot code and a kernel for your course - it's a more realistic goal that allows time for the code to be written properly. That way after your course is complete you can turn the kernel into an OS (e.g. optimize it, write hundreds of the device drivers, some applications, GUI, etc).


Cheers,

Brendan