Few questions from the very beginner...

[Eero Ränik]

I am very new to OS-development, and I have few questions. From where should I start? What languages should I use? What should I keep in mind? Are there any good tutorials about this?
Oh, and don't be angry when topics like this have already occured... Just post me the links or something...

[Perica]

..

[Eero Ränik]

Well, that all depends. Do you want to write your own BootLoader or use someone elses' (GRUB, XOSL etc.);

I guess I'd choose to write my own. I don't like to use other people's products, libraries and so when programming...

What languages do you know already?? If you don't know any programming language at the moment, i recommend you take some time-out to learn programming then come back to OS development. To create an OS you only need to know one language..... Assembler, but this is impractical as it gets quite difficult to code a large program in pure Assembler (Although this has been proven wrong by many people, many times); So people usally use a mixture of Assembler and a Higher Level Language (C being the most popular);

I know Assembler pretty much from reverse engineering game engines... And I should have no problems with C... Can I use C++ or other languages too?

Starting off is pretty hard, i recommend you read through the old posts on this board. Then think about it, is OS development really for you? Why do you want to make an OS?? Like many people, you will probably back-out and quit when things start to get very complicated. But if you are truly willing to sacrifice a large portion of your time building an OS that probably nobody will ever use, then go for it! But if you are another one of those young and crazy dreamers thinking that your OS will out-do Windows and make money from your OS, i advise that you quit straight away.

I make it just for fun (and getting better at programming and knowing more of computers low-level work)... And problably I won't back-out... It's my nature to finish all started, no matter how much time it will take. And I have plenty of time too and I'm not doing this for getting richer and am aware of users of my OS... Although I'm pretty young... ;D

Check out the .:QuickLinkz:. thread, this will have links to some of the best OS development sites on the internet.

Thanks...

BTW, are there any example OSes or something?

[Pype.Clicker]

so far, i would recommend you GeekOS and Cosmos (by geezer) as small OSes to look first. Minix may also be a good choice (that's where Linus started from).

If you don't fear entering a huge bunch of code, you may try Mobius (see Tim Robinson's profile), newOS (that's where Open BeOS started from) or maybe Clicker (if you don't fear my code :-p )

If other people have a Open-Source kernel ready (i mean, which have been enough further than "hello world" stage) please accept my appologizes for being ignorant, and post a link somewhere (why not in the "OS report" thread ? ...)

[Whatever5k]

Flick (http://flick.sourceforge.net / http://www.sourceforge.net/projects/flick/) may be a good reference for the beginning since I tried to keep the code simple but efficient.

[Pype.Clicker]

you may also wish to look for the BABY STEPS serie by crazybuddah (should still be in the forum -- about 1 year ago

[Therx]

Therx : http://sourceforge.net/projects/therx

This is my OS. It currently is 32bit, multitasking, has the first stages of MM, ditto Device Management, Floppy driver, first stages of FAT12, PCI detection etc.

Some of the code is fairly easy to read.

Therx

(the boot sector is John Fine's and the Floppy Driver is mostly Fabien Numez's)