OSDev.org

Hi,

I'm new. New to the forum and new to OS development. I wanted to say thank you very much to the people who contributed to the wiki. It was extremely helpful for getting this system administrator with a lot of Perl experience and some C++ experience to the point of having the start of a toy kernel implemented in C++ with runtime features actually ticking away counting uptime and showing a clock on the VGA screen.

It wasn't a quick process to get here but the wiki was so much of a time saver. Perfect way to get started with the x86 GDT/IDT/PTD/PTE so I can actually see things happening with out having to wrap my head around the official Intel references which can be a little, ahem, overwhelming at the very start. I never went to college for CS (I studied welding instead) and I swear I got about a quarter's worth of education out of the wiki in only a few weeks.

So thanks again from this grizzled sysadmin starting his new hobby of trying to come up with an OS design that isn't just another Unix clone.

Thanks again. And here's a screenshot of TalOS (yes, I've been playing too much Skyrim) ticking away inside qemu:

cardboardaardvark wrote: ↑Mon Nov 18, 2024 10:28 pm So thanks again from this grizzled sysadmin starting his new hobby of trying to come up with an OS design that isn't just another Unix clone.

Welcome to the club. Be prepared for it to suck your time out of your life if you stay interested!

BTW, you can't go much wrong with being just another Unix clone. As you do stuff, you'll get "a-ha" moments as you realize why Unix does things the way it does (you'll also get many many WTF moments as well, Unix isn't perfect!) And you'll have a ready source of user software to port, which may not be the case if you're using a non-Unix like API.

thewrongchristian wrote: ↑Tue Nov 19, 2024 5:30 am BTW, you can't go much wrong with being just another Unix clone. As you do stuff, you'll get "a-ha" moments as you realize why Unix does things the way it does (you'll also get many many WTF moments as well, Unix isn't perfect!) And you'll have a ready source of user software to port, which may not be the case if you're using a non-Unix like API.

Aye, I've thought about the lack of existing software to port if I don't supply a POSIX API and how that is going to be a detriment. Probably going to wind up with no one but me using it. But also, even if I do make another Unix clone, probably no one but me will ever be using it.

I saw a post around here yesterday where the OP was pointing out most people just get a clock going and walk away. And if anyone goes past that they wind up making a tiny Unix implementation and then walk away. No one actually tries anything different.

It's likely not as bad as "no one" ever tries to do something different but I'm not surprised to see that it is rare. I've got some ideas and it is really what I wanted to explore. As I've been reading about kernel design and from the little I know about Windows I find that I'm more inclined to think in terms of how Windows/VMS solves problems than how Unix does it. Which is rather surprising to me seeing as I've been using Unix as my primary workstation since 1994 and owned my own personal Sun Ultra 5 which I also used as my primary workstation.

I'm interested to see where a Windows/Unix Frankenstein winds up. One thing I very much want to do better than POSIX is how permissions work. The base model is too simplistic, extended permission attributes on files don't go far enough, and all the MAC choices for Linux and FreeBSD leave a lot to be desired.