Create Your Own Operating System: Build, deploy, and test your very own operating systems for the Internet of Things and other devices

by Lucus Darnell

Have you ever wanted to build your own operating system, but didn't know where to begin? Then this book is for you! In this book, the author explains everything you need to know from getting and installing the necessary tools to writing, compiling, deploying, and testing your very own operating system. By the time you are done you will have an operating system to call your own. And, don't worry about destroying your existing hardware and software environment as everything in this book is written with the intention of running in a virtualized environment. However, should you choose to do so, the author also explains how to deploy and test your new OS on bare-metal hardware as well. The first few chapters give a brief overview of how modern day computers work. In these chapters you will (re)learn everything from memory allocation, stacks, and bootloaders to low-level machine code and programming languages. After that, you will jump into downloading and installing the tools you will use for building your very own operating system. Here you will learn how to develop a bootloader and kernel just like modern day computers rely on for operating. The last few chapters will explain how to deploy and test your operating system as well as how to expand your OS to do more and even how to cross-compile your shiny new operating system for other devices such as the Raspberry Pi. To give an idea of what you can find in this book, below is the Table of Contents. 0x01 OS Basics 0x02 Intro to Machine Code 0x03 Intro to the Assembly Programming Language 0x04 Into to the C Programming Language 0x05 Getting Started - Installing VirtualBox - Installing Linux - Installing GNOME - Preparing CentOS and the VM - Troubleshooting VirtualBox Guest Additions - Preparing the Development Environment 0x06 Bootstrapping with the Bootloader - Creating the Entry Point - GNU GRUB - Compiling the Entry Point 0x07 Welcome to the Kernel 0x08 Putting it all Together 0x09 Testing Your Operating System 0x0A Starting Your Architecture Library - Expanding the Console 0x0B Expanding Your OS 0x0C Cross-Compiling for Other Architectures - Create a Custom Cross-Compiler - Porting for the Raspberry Pi - Testing on Physical Hardware Conclusion Acknowledgements Appendix Index

Genres: Technology

145 pages, Kindle Edition

Published August 21, 2016

Reviews

[Paweł Łukasik · Rating 2 out of 5]

For the ~$3.14 I've paid for this book I guess it was ok. Didn't have much expectations as I assumed it will mostly be about bootloader and simple kernel with very limited functionality. I would give it a 3 but one thing that bothered me was that in the beginning it was said I should have some fair amount of knowledge before reading and yet later there were pages about how to install VirtualBox and similar stuff I would expect someone who wants to write an operating system already has.

[Dan Rumney · Rating 3 out of 5]

Maybe my expectations were off

I was a little disappointed by this book.

While it does act as a kind of survey book indicating things you should know, any time things get meaty, it provides a link and tells you to go read that.

It doesn't bother to get into interrupt handlers and how they work. It doesn't bother to get into what you should be thinking about when you build an OS.

It doesn't talk about shells at all.

[Rod Haper · Rating 2 out of 5]

The title is a gross overstatement. The book shows how to create little more that a bootable hook on which one must then build something useful. This "OS" might be of use as beginning point to construct micro-controller software but it is far from being a useful general purpose operating system.

[Paulo Custodio · Rating 2 out of 5]

Good introduction text but with several mistakes

Gives a good introduction to the topics required for booting devices. The rating is low due to several coding and explanation mistakes.

[Ryan Schultz · Rating 4 out of 5]

A hands on approach to a daunting, yet enthralling topic

Their book makes accepting the concept of making one’s own operating system an easy and interesting thing to do. I recommend this book for anyone interested in creating their own operating system.

[Camden Mac Leod · Rating 2 out of 5]

I thought it was okay and the prospect of building my own OS was and still is enthralling for me. I don't think this book is necessarily worth the money because there are better, free, tutorials online and on YouTube. It is great for getting familiar with the languages used, how the microprocessor interacts with your program, and getting you from ground 0.