If you could build your own operating system from scratch, what would you make?

[code12344]

If you could build your own operating system from scratch one day, what would you build, and what would you add to it?

New and unusual ideas? Experiments with standard ideas but using strange or unconventional approaches? Or something completely new that you've had in your mind for a long time?

I don't care whether the idea is good or bad, brilliant or ridiculous, optimized or completely unoptimized. Tell me anything that comes to mind, even if it's just a rough idea or you're not sure whether it's practical.

I just want to know: if one day you became an OS developer and had complete freedom to design your own operating system, what would you have in mind?

[Octocontrabass]

if one day you became an OS developer

What if we already are OS developers?

[nullplan]

If you could build your own operating system from scratch one day, what would you build, and what would you add to it?

For me, this is a hobby. The journey is the destination. What I'm building is ultimately going to be very boring to everyone but me, since it is yet another UNIX clone (because I have found that you either learn from UNIX or are doomed to repeat it, badly). And I don't think even I'm going to be using it in the end, let alone anyone else. But I'm doing this for the learning experience.

[sandras]

Something completely new that you've had in your mind for a long time?

Tell me anything that comes to mind, even if it's just a rough idea or you're not sure whether it's practical.

I'm developing two operating systems.

I've been developing the idea for the first one for a very long time.

You may or may not be familiar with the Forth programming language. When it runs on bare metal, it usually runs without any protections. I always wanted to change that. So I'm developing a kernel, purpose-built to run my own Forth system.

The idea itself may not be revolutionary. It's a compromise. But it took me a long time to figure out some of the details and decide if I should pursue this idea at all.

The second operating system is more of a traditional one, but I do want to try out some of my own ideas on it. One that I'm already implementing is how I structure my source tree.

Another, which I use on both of these systems, is how I'm dynamically mapping and unmapping the free page-frame stack using it's own items as it grows and shrinks.

These ideas aren't completely original, I guess, but I think they both speak to me about how I think, and I want to explore more about where these ways of thinking lead when developing operating systems.

[AndrewAPrice]

If I could build any OS from scratch, I'd build this: https://github.com/AndrewAPrice/Perception