Retrogression

[inflater]

As I see, there's a slow regression at forums from the past month. Almost nothing new, discussions and questions that were answered many times, nothing new. Everything is spinning about the baby steps, bootloaders, file formats, pmode switching, multitasking or VESA beginnings. It's getting pretty boring

Anybody did notice this too?

[Stevo14]

Yea, I've noticed the same thing. Perhaps it is because nobody has the time to experiment and try new things during the summer?

bootloaders, file formats, pmode switching, multitasking or VESA beginnings

That is actually quite a wide range of topics if you think about it, even if they have all been discussed before.

[inflater]

I think the wide range is:

OS functions (kernel/shell), disk drivers, FAT16/EXT2 drivers, sound card drivers, network card drivers, GUI programming, mouse intercept (both COM, PS/2), generic USB enumerating, etc.

I like a OS that has a runnable and clean shell, TUI or GUI, not a "OS" with "TASK 1" "TASK 2" looping all over the time, "showing" its multitasking functions.

I think it's more than this summer... there are many questions on how to set GDT and IDT, print to screen, ISR handling, switch to pmode etc. Thats just very basic and I don't understand why it's discussed all over the time. They are the simplest things in a OS kernel... and wiki has it more than enough information of it.

After some time it's getting very boring to read topics "weird triple fault when entering pmode", "how to start?" etc. Of course nobody forces me to read them, but there's no interesting things than "how to return from user mode" nowadays. Maybe it's summer after all.

[01000101]

I've noticed it too.

I really wish alot of the people asking those questions would at least read the baby-steps, JamesM', Brans' tutorials before posting their issues with their GDTs and such. The Intel manuals explain those far better than I can, and they can be ordered for free.

I agree that summer may have something to do with it. People on vacation, hanging with friends, being outside more definately can be a big factor in the drop of exciting topics.

[AJ]

I agree, but there is a positive - with an influx of new os devvers, some of those projects should go on to be quite interesting in the future.

We (as the regular users of the forum) have also been criticised in the past for giving "RTFM" type answers too much - it's a difficult balance to strike, keeping interesting things going for the regulars while trying not to be too harsh on new users.

I do like it when the OS Design and Theory forum has a few interesting topics on the go.

Cheers,
Adam

[stephenj]

Well, I'd say the thing about being new to OSDev is that you don't have anything interesting to show/say for a long time...

For example, I went home to see my family this weekend, during my spare moments I managed to finish the code that interacts with the CMOS' time features (I also now have CMOS and PIT periodic interrupts). In the coming days, during my free time, I'll be researching the theory behind pseudo-random number generation.

But I'd assume that would be extremely simple/boring to anyone who has be developing their OS for years.

As for asking questions, I have yet to hit a problem that (OSDev|Google|(Intel|AMD) Manuals|Tinkering) couldn't solve. Thus far (in my kernel), I would say the hardest step has been just understanding the initial state of the bare metal (and how it can be manipulated). So it isn't that surprising that people ask a lot about it.

If I were "in more experienced shoes" I would probably wonder if the reduction in signal to noise was due, not to simpler posts, but a better understanding of the topic... Maybe you've improved as a developer.