How to Make a Computer Operating System

How to Make a Computer Operating System


An Operating System
tells the computer what to do. Whether the ones you have found don't
measure up, or if you are a hobbyist wanting to have a creation to call
your own, it can be a daunting task and it may take years to get your
own operating system to be of any use. Remastering an existing Linux
distro can also be straight forward and easy. An operating system is a
piece of software to manage and interact with the hardware effectively
and provides a shell for other programs to run on.

1. 1
   Decide what you want your OS to do.
   Whether it is a fully capable OS with a GUI or something a bit more
   minimalistic, you'll need to know what direction you are taking it
   before beginning.
   
   
   
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2. 2
   Decide if you would
   rather do it all yourself from the ground up, or if there is an existing
   kernel you would like to build on top of. Linux from Scratch is a project for those that would like to build their own Linux distro.
   
3. 3
   Decide if you're going to create your own bootloader or a pre-created one such as GRUB.
   While coding your own bootloader will give a lot of knowledge of the
   hardware and the BIOS, it may set you back on the programming of the
   actual kernel.
   
4. 4
   While it is possible to
   create an operating system in a language such as Pascal or BASIC you
   will be better off using C or C++ and Assembly. Assembly is absolutely necessary as some vital parts of an operating system require it.
   
5. 5
   Start small. Begin
   with small things such as displaying text and interrupts before moving
   on to things such as memory management and multitasking.
   
6. 6
   Decide on your API.
   While this is a long way off it is a good idea to plan ahead. A good API
   to choose is POSIX, which is well documented. All Unices have at least
   partial support for POSIX, so it would be trivial to port Unix programs
   to your OS.
   
7. 7
   Decide on your design.
   There are monolithic kernels and microkernels. Monolithic kernels
   implement all the services in the kernel, while microkernels have a
   small kernel combined with user daemons implementing services. In
   general, monolithic kernels are faster, but microkernels have better
   fault isolation and reliability.
   
8. 8
   If
   you want an easy way, consider Ubuntu remastersys, Fedora Revisor,
   Custom NimbleX, Puppy Remaster, PCLinuxOS mklivecd, SuSE Studio^[1] and SuSE KIWI. However, the operating system you create belongs to the company who started the service.
   
   
   
   
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edit Tips

• Do not wipe your hard drive completely. Remember, wiping your drive will clear out ALL your data and its irreversible! Use GRUB or another boot manager to dual boot your system with another OS until yours is fully functional.
  
  
  
  
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• An alternative method of testing your new operating system is to use
  a virtual machine. Rather than rebooting your computer each time you
  make changes, or having to transfer the files from your development
  computer to your test machine, you use a virtual machine application to
  run your OS while your current OS is still running. Three such VM
  applications are VMWare (http://www.vmware.com), the open source alternative bochs (http://bochs.sourceforge.net),
  and Microsoft Virtual PC (www.microsoft.com ; Microsoft Virtual PC may
  not be compatible with your distro of linux, but it is the most
  trustable). VMware also has a freely available server product which
  should suit nicely.(http://www.vmware.com/products/server/) An easy one is sun's xVM VirtualBox. (http://www.virtualbox.org)
  
• Getting a copy of the Intel developer manuals from http://developer.intel.com/products/processor/manuals/index.htm is vital
  
• Use websites such as http://osdev.org and http://osdever.net
  to help you develop your own operating system. Please note well that
  for most purposes, the OSDev.org community would prefer that you stick
  to using their wiki, and do not join the forum. If you do decide to join
  the forum, there are prerequisites: You are required to thoroughly know
  C or C++, and x86 Assembly language. You must also understand general,
  and complex programming concepts such as Linked Lists, Queues, etc.
  
• In order to compile an operating system from C or C++ code, you will
  of course be using one compiler or another. The OSDev community, in its
  rules, explicitly states that the community is not around to babysit
  new programmers. If you are trying to develop an operating system, it
  goes without saying that you are expected to be a programming "God."
  
• You should therefore read the user guide/manuals/documentation for
  your chosen C/C++ compiler, whether it comes packaged with the software
  or is available on the distributor's website. You will need to know many
  intricate things about your compiler and, for C++ development, you
  should know about the compiler's mangling scheme and its ABI. You are
  expected to understand the various executable formats (ELF, PE, COFF,
  plain binary, etc.), and understand that the Windows proprietary format,
  PE (.exe) has been copyrighted and that, if you choose to use it, you
  are wasting your time and if you ask questions on the forum about the
  use of PE in a kernel you are also wasting everyone else's time.
  
• You are also required to have read the processor manuals for the
  processor architecture you have chosen; whether x86 (Intel), ARM, MIPS,
  PPC, etc. The manuals for a processor architecture may be easily found
  using a Google search ("Intel Manuals", "ARM manuals" etc).
  
• Do not start an operating system project in order to begin
  learning programming. No. Uh-uh. Do not. If you don't already know C,
  C++, Pascal, or some other suitable language inside out, including
  pointer manipulation, low-level bit manipulation, bit shifting, inline
  assembly language, etc, you are not fit for operating system
  development. Please, if such is the case, do not join the
  OSDev.org forums and start asking obvious questions. It will simply
  result in "Read the f***ing Manual" answers. You should try reading
  Wikipedia, and the manuals for the various tools you wish to use.
  
• Do not expect that a proper operating system will be easy to build.
  There are, lots of times, intricate interdependencies. For example, in
  order to make an operating system able to handle multiple processors,
  your Memory Manager must have "locking" mechanisms in place to prevent
  multiple processors from accessing the same resource at the same time.
  The "locks" used for this will require the presence of a scheduler to
  make sure that only one processor accesses a critical resource at any
  given time and all the others are made to wait. Yet the scheduler
  depends on the presence of a Memory Manager. This is a case of a
  deadlocked dependency. There is no standard way to solve problems like
  this; each operating system programmer is expected to be skilled enough
  to figure out his own way of dealing with it. Do not ask stupid
  questions about implementation details.
  
• Last but not least it must be emphasized that if while reading this
  part of the article you find that you're shrinking away, then you should
  either: (1) Man up and go do the right thing, which is to read fully,
  and not skim, the manuals for your processor architecture and (2) read
  the manuals for your development toolchain (compiler, linker,
  bootloader, etc).
  
• Your second option is to quit, since it means that you are not a
  super-1337 programmer and are going to be wasting both your, and
  everyone else's, time asking stupid questions and getting the same
  answer: Read the f***ing Manual. You are expected to be up to par as a
  seasoned sage of a programmer.
  
• This may seem harsh but, as time passes, more and more 13-year-old
  big dreamers with no programming experience keep spamming forums and IRC
  channels and irritating everyone with stupid questions. Everyone wants
  to make the next Windows. The online OSDev community has been going
  strong for at least 11 years and counting; have you seen anyone come up
  and beat Windows over these past 11 years? Do you think you're so great
  that you can beat the hundreds of programming experts who've worked at
  the same goal? The answer is NO.
  
• It is an excellent idea to keep a backup of the last working source,
  in case something goes terribly wrong with the current version or your
  development PC crashes and is unable to boot.
  
• Consider developing it in a team; that way, less time is required
  and more problems can be solved and generally the OS may be better.
  
• It may be a good choice to make a completely new partition for developing the OS.
  
• You will not have a full system in two weeks. Start with an OS that boots, then move on to the cool stuff.
  
• Check for potential deadlocks and other bugs. Bugs, deadlocks and other problems will affect your Operating System project.
  
• Release a "release candidate" so that users are able to tell you potential problems with your operating system
  

edit Warnings

• Having your operating system carelessly written to the hard drive can corrupt it completely. Be careful.
  
• Be sure to implement security features as your top priority if you ever want to use it for anything.
  
• If you do something really stupid, like write random bytes to random
  I/O ports, you *will* crash your OS, and (in theory) can fry your
  hardware. For a demonstration, execute 'cat /dev/port' on Linux as root.
  Your computer *will* crash.
  

edit Things You'll Need

• A good computer
  
• A CPU for the Architecture you will be developing
  
• Enough memory (RAM) for a Virtual Machine
  
• A 'Host' OS, used to develop the Assembler (and others) source code,
  also to build and package it, while it is in its early stages,
  eventually your own OS can be its host.
  
• Most importantly, you need a compiler.
  

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edit Related wikiHows

• How to Get Started Programming in C Sharp
  
• How to Learn to Use Linux
  
• How to Learn a Programming Language
  
• How to Build a Seti Supercomputer
  

edit Sources and Citations

1. ↑ http://susestudio.com/