FREE OS

[Bart Silverstrim]

On Dec 1, 2005, at 4:57 AM, Marccorn2005 at aol.com wrote:

> hi FreeBSD,
>
>                 Hi  My Names Mr Marc Harry Charles Corn,
>                 I  am The CEO of _www.skyline2.co.uk_
> (http://www.skyline2.co.uk)  i am  e-mailing you on consern to your
>                 free  OS um i want to develop an OS aswell are you 
> able to
> give me instructions on how  to start an OS or even join Forces to 
> make an OS
>
> meny thanks from the Skyline2 Team

You might want to start by working on the image your web site projects 
of your group. The spelling errors make it look atrocious, and 
consequently, not many people would probably take you seriously after 
seeing it. Are you an actual company, or some kids doing this as a 
hobby, or...?  If you're not an actual incorporated company, I don't 
know if you'd want to use the term CEO.

If you're interested in creating a free operating system, a common 
response you'll probably get is to just download the source code and 
look at it yourselves; I'd not necessarily recommend this though, since 
if you're just starting such a project the source to FreeBSD or the 
Linux kernel may be a bit daunting.  For learning how the best way to 
start may be to look through the Minix source code.

There are some books available through Barnes and Noble and Amazon that 
may help; there are books on the Linux and FreeBSD kernels, and there 
are Tanenbaum's books on programming operating systems.  There's also 
an old book floating around with a title similar to "Create Your Own 32 
Bit Operating System" that I'm sure someone else could help clarify on 
the list.

Actually, the BEST way to start is to sit down and actually write out 
your goals and aims for the particular OS (real time?  Just something 
that boots?  Will it be multiuser?  Networking? etc.) before even 
starting the programming tasks.  Then you can google for hobby 
operating systems to see what other people are doing, or maybe join 
other projects developer teams to see how they run things.

-Bart