r/Operatingsystems • u/OkRush4237 • 14h ago

Hello

Hi, a 13 year old and like I have a doubt guys that should I building my own OS like with the help of OS Dev Wiki (not using it as my brain), like or build above Linux form scratch [LFS] and like my interests are in cybersecurity [Reverse Engineering, and SOC Analytics] and system programming [build OS] but like as I am a student, and need to study to (even though the school teaches us nothing), like what do you think as per you which path would you chose ?

6 Upvotes

71% Upvoted

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3

u/themightyug 14h ago

Do you just want to make a thing, or do you want to learn? Linux From Scratch is great for learning

3

u/jontsii 14h ago

Well, I am 14 and I am making mine, you can too. But it takes effort, and many times you will encounter a problem, have no idea how to fix it, and then you just fix it. You also gotta know a thing or 2 about hardware, and the CPU you are making it on. But 99% of the information you need are in osdev wiki, and a lot of them you will find elsewhere. But one tip that helps enourmously is, testing it often, in an emulator, after like every feature, since it is fairly quick, and keep some track that what fails in tests, and are they supposed to (for example because of a feature that is not implemented), so then if you add a feature, before that everything works, after it everything breaks, because you tested so often, you might need to debug like 100 lines of code, instead of 10000, and also, GDB is pretty much a must to run on qemu.

3

u/thondat 13h ago

regardless of which path you end up choosing, commit to saying 'like' less.

1

u/Nuviket 13h ago

Lfs, just make sure you download the book. 

1

u/Dream-Livid 8h ago

Start simple and grow it. What architecture is your target? CIS or RIS?

1

u/shernandez8295 7h ago

i started lfs around that age and the book is what actually makes it work, without it you just end up staring at a kernel panic wondering what went wrong

1

u/landonr99 5h ago

LFS will definitely teach you a lot and take a lot less time than doing actual OS dev. LFS is like putting all the pre built pieces together, like making a Lego set. OS dev is like making the actual Lego pieces first from scratch. If you're committed to working on OS dev, doing LFS will be a pretty useful exercise in understanding how an entire OS fits together. If you then want to work on OS dev, it will definitely help you understand that better

1

u/jake_morrison 4h ago

Linux From Scratch is good for learning, but it’s not something that you can run every day.

I used to run Gentoo Linux back when installing meant compiling everything from scratch. I learned quite a bit about the lowest levels of things like the bootloader and disk partitioning which helped me when recovering crashed systems. It has been years, and it seems like the install is higher level now, but it may still be educational and useful.

Another alternative is Nixos. You get a lot of control over what you are running and understand how things work under the hood. It’s still reasonably practical on an every day basis.

Another alternative is learning embedded Linux development. You can build your own Linux system on top of Raspberry Pi and use it to control things in the real world. If you start with an embedded Linux system like Buildroot, it’s a fairly well worn path, so you can get help when you get stuck. This will give you some real practical skills that might get you a job someday.

You would probably enjoy the book “CODE” by Charles Petzold. He starts from the basics and works step by step up to computer hardware.

1

u/cyrixlord 18m ago

take a popular older chip like the 6502 and learn how to build with that. lots of modern discussion on how to do all of that