Productive OS Development

[OdinVex]

What does the community of OSDev think would be most compatible and productive towards a Linux-derived os development? All comments (productive please) welcome!

(Eventually I'm hoping to decide what os I'll throw into a Virtual Machine, 32GB of RAM on 8x5Ghz so speed won't really be necessary)

[Love4Boobies]

The question seems ambiguous to me. Most compatible and productive what?

[OdinVex]

A Linux-derived OS? >_> How about a "welcome everyone, describe your dev stations and feel free to post screenshots if any, comments etc" ?

[iansjack]

http://www.gentoo.org/

(Batteries not included. Some assembly required.)

http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/

(Components to build batteries included. Some DIY skills required.)

[nerdguy]

I don't understand what you mean by a Linux-Derived OS. Do you mean rolling a Linux Distro? Also as for screenshots there is a thread under OS Development called "What does your OS look like". Can you elaborate more on the topic?

[OdinVex]

Screw the Linux-derivative bit, I've settled for a "what do you use to dev your os?" kind of topic.

[Combuster]

http://www.gentoo.org/

That

[nerdguy]

https://www.archlinux.org/
PS. Does anybody know of OpenSUSE?

[Combuster]

PS. Does anybody know of OpenSUSE?

I do, would not use it again.

[iansjack]

OpenSuSE is no better, and no worse, than Ubuntu, Fedora, or many other popular distros. They are all aimed at the replacement Windows market and contain increasing amounts of bloatware, starting with the desktop manager. I wouldn't recommend any of them for serious development work.

The best way to setup a development environment is some form of roll-your-own, using a lean desktop environment such as xfce, WindowMaker, or the like. That way you get to choose just those tools you need and will end up with a significantly faster, and smaller, install. If you're up to OS development then you're certainly up to installing and maintaining Gentoo. LFS is a little more hard core (but can produce an unbelievably fast system); keeping it up-to-date (if you care about that) can be a bit of a pain.

[OdinVex]

Thank you for your replies, I appreciate them. No one mentioned Debian eh?

[iansjack]

You are correct. No-one mentioned Debian. Make of that what you will.

[Griwes]

Yo mama so old, Debian added her to the stable repository.

[FallenAvatar]

Yo mama so old, Debian added her to the stable repository.

LOL, thanks, I needed a laugh

I personally use Ubuntu for OS Dev (I like modern Computers, and therefor I like GUIs) although I do rip out Unity and put Gnome classic on there.

I have been considering LFS for a while, but I am just not familiar enough with linux and all of its modules/addons/what have you to feel comfortable trying it just yet.

- Monk

[sortie]

It doesn't really matter which Linux distribution you use for operating system's development as long as it is reasonably up to date. Often I upgrade my installations with the latest releases of the tools I use rather than waiting for my distribution to ship them. Indeed, I even maintain my own GCC fork that I use to build my hobby operating system with.

Developing an operating system is an exercise in bootstrapping - you often end up making your development operating system more and more similar to your own operating system to ease cross-development. For example, a few of my custom build tools runs both on Linux and my own operating system and the same build system is used on both platforms.

Besides, your own operating system eventually becomes the best platform to develop your own operating system on - assuming it is meant for that and you put in enough effort.