Emma OS

[cbrowne]

Hello!

I thought I'd introduce myself formally, as is customary on the internets.

I'm writing an OS called Emma. The name is not the name of my girlfriend, sister, mother, aunt, friend or anything else. I wanted a female name with the letter E in it. Emma was chosen randomly.

The reason for a female name is simple, but difficult to explain. Suffice it to say, a project of sufficient complexity is easily comparable via metaphor with the female creature (who, let's face it, is as complex if not moreso than an operating system).

The reason for the letter E is that I wanted an acronym that included the word "Easy". Easy is both a design goal and a wish/prayer that the experience of designing an OS will be easy. One mustn't confuse my (somewhat archaic) use of the word "easy" with its contemporary meaning - think "at ease" or "ease into" rather than "not difficult". Whilst working alone, at least, I can choose the pace at which I proceed, making the experience thus far pleasantly easy. The other letters have not had words assigned to them at this stage.

The languages I have chosen are those I am familiar with. ASM and C. I'm currently working with a qemu (i386) environment, but I am hoping that at some point soon I will acquire a K6-3 testing machine. One of the reasons for starting the project was to make use of an old K6 we had in the attic (K6-2 I think), but since starting the project I have realised said machine was trashed in a recent house move - so, ironically, instead of the project being for the K6, instead I'm getting a K6 for the project!

I have an idea I'll be writing most things myself, for the added educational value, but I would be open to the idea of, say, providing a port of BASH alongside EASH (or whatever I decide to call my shell - distant future, folks). I've started writing the bootloader myself (so far I have it outputting low memory size, and boy was that a sense of achievement!).

What's more, I'll be attending to my usual principle of "if you don't understand it, don't write/run it" - in other words, copy/pasting is completely out of the question. The educational value of doing that is absolute zilch anyway. I have often been tempted over the years to run code I don't understand, but every time I give into the temptation all I feel is a sort of flat impotence, compared to the swelling pride and overwhelming sense of achievement I get when I write something carefully and understand every line and it still runs (even if there's an "ish" appended).

Wow, I'm giving a real David Copperfield of an introduction here. I should probably just open the field to questions and shut my trap!

So, any questions?

[LegendDairy]

Seems like a nice worked out project, good luck!