intermezzOS
An operating system for learning
Preface
This book describes the intermezzOS project. intermezzOS is a hobby operating system, specifically targeted at showing beginners how to get into operating systems development. Rather than describe some sort of final OS, it instead proceeds in a tutorial-like fashion, allowing you to implement intermezzOS yourself, alongside the book.
The book assumes that you have programmed in some language before, but not any particular one. In fact, people who have not done low-level programming before are a specific target of this book; I’ll be explaining a lot of things that other resources will just assume that you know.
intermezzOS is implemented in Rust, and some assembly code. We’ll try to explain Rust along the way, but may refer you to its documentation when things get tricky. This book isn’t really about learning Rust, but you might accidentally along the way.
You can find all of this stuff on GitHub.
This book is in the book repository, the kernel is in kernel, and the
website is there too. Feel free to open issues if you want to discuss things
in a general sense, and send bug reports and PRs to the appropriate repos if
you’d like to help with a particular component.
The Story
A long time ago, in college, my friends and I were working on a hobby operating system, XOmB. It was... tough. Frankly, while I learned a lot, I was a pretty minor contributor. I got frustrated too easily. One day, I found Ruby, and I was pretty much done with low-level programming. I had done it most of my life, and I was bored. Bored, and sick of dealing with core dumps.
Those details aren’t that important. What is important is that over the years, I’ve always wanted to get back into this stuff. But the problem is this: there are a lot of people who do hobby operating system work, but... I don’t like their attitudes.
You see, a lot of people see low-level programming as some kind of superior, only-for-the-smartest kind of thing. They have a puritanical world-view: “I suffered to learn this, so you too must suffer to build character.” I think that’s short sighted. Low level programming is difficult to get into, but that says more about the teachers’ faults than the students’.
Anyway, as my professional life has moved back towards the low level, I’ve been thinking about this topic a lot again. That’s when I found an awesome link: Writing an OS in Rust by Philipp Oppermann. I cannot speak enough about how awesome Phil’s tutorial is; it single-handedly inspired me to get back into operating systems.
The big difference with Phil’s tutorial is that it doesn’t treat you as being stupid for not knowing ‘the basics’. It doesn’t say “spend hours debugging this thing, because I did.” It doesn’t insult you for being new. It just explains the basics of a kernel.
It’s amazing how much a little bit of a framing can completely change the way you see something. When the examples I found were all about how you have to be an amazing rockstar ninja and we won’t give you all the code because you suck if you can’t figure it out, I hated this stuff. When it was kind, understanding, and helpful, I couldn’t get enough.
Once I got to a certain part in Phil’s tutorial, I started implementing stuff myself. A lot of the initial code here is going to be similar to Phil’s. But I’m going to write about it anyway. There’s a good reason for that:
Writing is nature’s way of showing us how sloppy our thinking is.
- Leslie Lamport
By re-explaining things in my own words, I hope to understand it even better. This is just a perpetual theme with me: I like teaching because it helps me learn. I like writing because it helps me understand.
We'll be using a tool Phil developed called bootimage, and we'll explain
similar concepts, but with different code and in different ways, and in a
different order.
Furthermore, I will not commit to any kind of schedule for this project. It’s going to be in my spare time, and I’m learning a lot of this as I go, too.
The Name
The nomad has a territory; he follows customary paths; he goes from one point to another; he is not ignorant of points (water points, dwelling points, assembly points, etc.). But the question is what in nomad life is a principle and what is only a consequence. To begin with, although the points determine paths, they are strictly subordinated to the paths they determine, the reverse happens with the sedentary. The water point is reached only in order to be left behind; every point is a relay and exists only as a relay. A path is always between two points, but the in-between has taken on all the consistency and enjoys both an autonomy and a direction of its own. The life of the nomad is the intermezzo.
Deleuze and Guattari, “A Thousand Plateaus”, p380
If you’re not into particular kinds of philosophy, this quote won’t mean a lot. Let’s look at the dictionary definition:
An intermezzo, in the most general sense, is a composition which fits between other musical or dramatic entities, such as acts of a play or movements of a larger musical work.
I want this project to be about learning. Learning is often referred to as a journey. You start off in ignorance and end in knowledge. In other words, ‘learning’ is that part in the middle, the in-between state.
The tricky thing about learning is, you never stop learning. Once you learn something, there’s something new to learn, and you’re on a journey again.
If you want to learn a lot, then you’ll find yourself perpetually in the middle.
There is another sense by which this name makes sense: as we’ll learn in the beginning of the book, operating systems are largely about abstractions. And abstractions are themselves ‘in the middle’, between what they’re abstracting and who they are abstracting it for.
Principles
Here are the guiding principles of intermezzOS:
- We’re all actual people. Please treat each other as such.
- We’re all here to learn. Let’s help each other learn, rather than being some kind of vanguard of knowledge.
- The only thing that matters about your language background is the amount you may have to learn.
- Everything must be documented, or it’s not done.
And of course, everything related to this project is under the Code of Conduct.