OSDev.org

It has been 2 years since I posted here as an arrogant newb. Life has changed and I had a stint as a professional developer (C# and VB make me feel dirty on the inside but they paid the bills and hopefully will again in the future.). I am now getting a grasp of operating systems through Operating System Concepts (the dinosaur book) and have realized this is not a task I can accomplish (in a reasonable time frame) alone. That being said I want to be involved in the development of an OS and I am not at a level to tackle the decision making process.

I would love to find a group willing to help a hapless newb (who is proficient in C, C++, C#, and VB and can read/hack ASM, Perl and many others (I spent too much time studying languages and too little studying concepts)) and if there is no group willing to work with me I would at least like to find some well written hobby level code that I can read through. Thank you in advance for any replies.

First thing first, why you want to do osdev? depends on your objective if may actually be realistic. For example, if your objective is to for fun, you may target for an over-simplified os.

The basic plan:

Step One: Get involved in OS project (however I can).
Step Two: ???
Step Three: Learn.

Well mostly to learn but geek cred is a motivating factor as well..

monkeykoder wrote:Step One: Get involved in OS project (however I can).

FreeBSD, Linux, etc.
http://wiki.freebsd.org/IdeasPage

And of cause you can get involved in many project as the role of sponsor

monkeykoder wrote:It has been 2 years since I posted here as an arrogant newb. Life has changed and I had a stint as a professional developer (C# and VB make me feel dirty on the inside but they paid the bills and hopefully will again in the future.). I am now getting a grasp of operating systems through Operating System Concepts (the dinosaur book) and have realized this is not a task I can accomplish (in a reasonable time frame) alone. That being said I want to be involved in the development of an OS and I am not at a level to tackle the decision making process.

I would love to find a group willing to help a hapless newb (who is proficient in C, C++, C#, and VB and can read/hack ASM, Perl and many others (I spent too much time studying languages and too little studying concepts)) and if there is no group willing to work with me I would at least like to find some well written hobby level code that I can read through. Thank you in advance for any replies.

By read/hack i sure hope you understand it as well. If you don't know all the ropes of assembly read The Art of Assembly. Its worth reading (i believe there's also a second edition)

Read/hack isnt a talent unless you play DOS games.

I have been considering Hurd/Mach but I have fears that projects at that level of maturity might be beyond my grasp.

By read/hack I mean I've read books but haven't gotten a feel for the language yet.

Wow it has been a while (I moved and had no internet while waiting for enough money). I think I am starting to want to just go completely insane in exploring the concept of minimal usefulness. I think I can pare down the necessary features (initially) to a network interface and a file system interface. A completely minimal "web server" gets request from user gets file from hard drive sends it off. The next steps of course require much greater capability (dynamic webpages and database access). The 10 year goal of course would be a fully functional webserver in under X watts (currently researching microprocessors and microcontrollers to determine minimum reasonable value for X)