CODEWITHSUNDEEP
operating-system
karim hasebou
karim hasebou

Reputation: 41

what should i study to get an indepth understanding of operating systems

I have been programming in java for 3 years but I have no experience with other languages. I want to know what I need to study in order to be able to make an operating system. Am most likely going to make my operating system based on Linux kernel. What programming languages should I be familiar with and what aspects of the pc hardware should I study. if you know any online tutorials or good books please mention them.

Upvotes: 1

Views: 1065

Answers (2)

tangrs
tangrs

Reputation: 9930

The answer depends on how far you want to go and how much you want to write yourself vs using existing code.

The most straightforward way is to have a look at Arch Linux or Gentoo and build your own, custom Linux setup. Approximate time needed to create a minimal working system: ~2 hours

You could, otherwise, compile the Linux kernel, build some software packages and put it all together yourself and create your own Linux distro - i.e your own operating system in a sense. Linux From Scratch will be an invaluable resource if this is what you decide to do. Approximate time needed to create a minimal working system: ~2-5 days

Say that's too easy for you but you're not ready to delve into the nitty-gritty of kernel development. You can write your own applications that run on top of the Linux kernel. Typically, you'd need to know C/C++ but any language that supports running on Linux/compiling to a Linux executable will work. Heck, you could chuck a (or write your own) Java runtime on and write your whole 'operating system'/user-space in Java. Approximate time needed to create a minimal working system: ~6-12 months

What about if you want to get down to programming your own kernel from scratch? Heck, Linux is overrated and you want to write your own kernel and it's going to be the next best thing! You would want to learn a bit about the platform you're developing on. At the very least, you'll need to know the assembly instructions of some special operations for your platform that can't be done natively in C like switching CPU modes. You'll definitely need to read up on the OS dev wiki for this and you should have a fair decent computer science background.

At this point, you shouldn't need too much other than a good tutorial, C, a little assembly, reference manuals for the hardware you're hoping to support and 3+ years of computer science background to get you started. Your boot loader that's booting your kernel should handle most of the hardware initialisation. Bootloaders like GRUB (I'm assuming you're developing on a x86 system) does so much for you that it can probably just jump to your kernel main function straight away without you having to do too much. Again, if you wanted, you could port or write your own Java runtime in C and write the rest of your kernel in Java! Approximate time needed to create a minimal working system: ~3-5 years

But, let's just say you're screaming for more pain and you want to write an operating system really from scratch and you don't want no bootloader doing a lot of the legwork. What do you need? Firstly, you'll need a lot more reference manuals. And you'll need to read up on a lot more assembly. Especially for Intel processors, there's a lot of work involved bringing the system up from 16bit mode to 32/64bit protected mode with paging (which is what I assume you want). You'll also want to know about every tiny quirk and weirdness of your platform that will affect your OS (these are often not documented; hooray!). Plus, all of the above. In short, you will need to study everything. Approximate time needed to create a minimal working system: 5+ years

Of course, this post is just scraping the surface of what is needed to even bring up a basic operating system capable of say, opening a web browser. The approximates roughly assumes a minimal working system is something capable of running a graphical web browser and will vary depending on how much you want to write.

I don't mean to be condescending but this is the kind of reality you'll be facing if you decide to write your own operating system. Nevertheless, it is a valuable learning experience if you can break the initial barrier or even just trying to set up your own Linux system.

Upvotes: 2

Arpit
Arpit

Reputation: 775

First, I would say that you install any Linux OS on your system and get accustomed with it.

Second, for OS development you have to know C language. As for the Assembly language, it depends from where you start the OS development. If you will be using available bootloaders, then I don't think that you will be requiring to learn assembly language.

This is a website on OS development: http://wiki.osdev.org/Main_Page There you will find all the stuff you need to know for the OS development. And also how to develop OS step-by-step.

Now-a-days, a "Eudyptula Challenge" is going on. It is a series of programming exercise for the linux kernel. You can find more info here: http://eudyptula-challenge.org/

Upvotes: 1

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