How are Operating Systems "Made"?

operating-system low-level osdev
stalepretzel picture stalepretzel · Dec 31, 2008 · Viewed 19.6k times · Source

Creating an OS seems like a massive project. How would anyone even get started?

For example, when I pop Ubuntu into my drive, how can my computer just run it? (This, I guess, is what I'd really like to know.)

Or, looking at it from another angle, what is the least amount of bytes that could be on a disk and still be "run" as an OS?

(I'm sorry if this is vague. I just have no idea about this subject, so I can't be very specific. I pretend to know a fair amount about how computers work, but I'm utterly clueless about this subject.)

Answer

Roberto Russo picture Roberto Russo · Dec 31, 2008

Well, the answer lives in books: Modern Operating Systems - Andrew S. Tanenbaum is a very good one. The cover illustration below.

The simplest yet complete operating system kernel, suitable for learning or just curiosity, is Minix.
Here you can browse the source code.

Modern Operating Systems
(source: cs.vu.nl)

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