Notable Projects
This page maintains a list of operating system projects considered to be notable. An operating system is considered notable if it has received some form of success outside of the relatively tiny sphere of hobby operating system development (e.g. has had a full release, is self-hosting, has been reported on outside of the hobby OSdev world, etc.) or if it has achieved such notability within the operating system development community as a useful answer to the question, "I want to see what kind of operating systems you guys have built"
If you believe your project meets one or more of the criteria above, feel free to add it to the list. The worst that could happen is you fall out of notability due to inactivity.
Everyone is welcome to add their own projects to the regular Projects list of all hobbyist operating systems
Active Notable Alternative Operating Systems
9frontPlan9front (or 9front) is a fork of the Plan 9 from Bell Labs operating system. The project was started to remedy a perceived lack of devoted development resources inside Bell Labs, and has accumulated various fixes and improvements. |
|
BareMetalBareMetal is a 64-bit OS for x86-64 based computers. The OS is written entirely in Assembly while applications can be written in Assembly or C/C++. The two main purposes of BareMetal are for educational uses in learning low-level OS programming in 64-bit Assembly and to be used as a base for a high-speed data processing node. Source code is well documented and freely available. As of version 0.4.9 BareMetal OS officially supports multiple processors, memory management, and Ethernet communications. |
Ian Seyler (ian.seyler at returninfinity.com) http://www.returninfinity.com/
|
FreeDOSToday, FreeDOS is ideal for anyone who wants to bundle a version of DOS without having to pay a royalty for use of DOS. FreeDOS will also work on old hardware and embedded systems. FreeDOS is also an invaluable resource for people who would like to develop their own operating system. While there are many free operating systems out there, no other free DOS-compatible operating system exists. |
The mailing lists at http://www.freedos.org/lists/
|
Ghost OSA homemade operating system with a microkernel for the IA32 (x86) platform. The project is written in C++ and Assembly. Features: multiprocessor- & multitasking support, kernel API library, custom C library, ELF support, IPC (messages, signals, shared memory, pipes), VFS, window server & GUI with homemade toolkit, PS/2 keyboard & mouse driver, VESA video driver and more... |
Max Schlüssel (lokoxe@gmail.com) April 21, 2017 -- 0.5.6 (Inactive)
|
Kolibri OSKolibri OS was a fork of the 32-bit version of Menuet OS but has changed much along the way. Despite fitting on a standard 1.44 MB floppy, this wonderful OS contains: the complete GUI desktop, a lot of drivers and great software (such as web browser and music player), system programs and games! The Kernel and most applications, libraries and drivers are written in FASM, but some are in C-- (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C-- ; link to their C-- compiler: http://c--sphinx.narod.ru/). At this OS you can write the ASM code and execute it after assembling. Source code is open - http://websvn.kolibrios.org/listing.php?repname=Kolibri+OS - and the contributions are welcome! |
|
LK (Little Kernel)An open source embedded multiprocessor kernel for ARM, x86, x86-64. Other platforms are work-in-progress and are in various stages of development with varying activity. |
Travis Geiselbrecht (travisg at gmail.com) https://github.com/littlekernel/lk
|
PedigreeMonolithic OS with several backends supported - x86, x64, MIPS32, ARM and PowerPC. Kernel written in C++ with the obvious bits of ASM. Offers a reasonable amount of POSIX support and a tiling GUI and can run Apache, DOSBox, and various other common programs. Planned to also offer a native API alongside POSIX for Pedigree-specific applications. |
JamesM, bluecode, pcmattman, IRC freenode.net#pedigree http://www.pedigree-project.org/ Foster Milestone #1 (most recent release).
|
SeaOSSeaOS is a hybrid kernel with loadable modules that supports ATA, AHCI, EXT2, ELF, and many other fancy acronyms. It has basic networking support, initial VT-x support, and is self-hosting with a fairly complete unix-like userland. Designed for simplicity. |
Daniel Bittman (danielbittman1 at gmail.com) http://dbittman.github.io/seaos
|
SortixSortix is a small self-hosting operating-system aiming to be a clean and modern POSIX implementation. It is a hobbyist operating system written from scratch with its own base system, including kernel and standard library, as well as ports of third party software. It has a straightforward installer and can be developed under itself. Releases come with the source code in /src, ready for tinkering. |
|
とあるOS (ToAruOS)32-bit modular kernel written in C. Supports pipes, shared memory, signals, POSIX-compliant file access, threading, audio, IPv4. Heavy focus on advanced GUI, including a compositing window system. |
NCSA/University of Illinois License August 2, 2017 -- 1.2.1 (Active)
|
VisopsysVisopsys (VISual OPerating SYStem) is an alternative operating system for PC-compatible computers, written “from scratch”, and developed primarily by a single hobbyist programmer since 1997. Its primary "useful feature" is a reasonably functional partition management program - the ‘Disk Manager’, which can create, format, delete, resize, defragment, copy, and move partitions, and modify their attributes. It supports both DOS/MBR and UEFI partition tables. It can also copy hard disks, and has a simple and friendly graphical interface. A basic version can fit on a bootable floppy disk, or you can use the entire system from a ‘live’ CD/DVD |
|
MikeOSMikeOS is an operating system for x86 PCs, written in assembly language. It is a learning tool to show how simple 16-bit, real-mode OSes work, with well-commented code and extensive documentation. It has a BASIC interpreter with 46 instructions, supports over 60 syscalls, could manage a serial terminal connection and output the sound through PC speaker. There is also a file manager, text editor, image viewer and some games |
Mike Saunders, okachi [at] gmail [dot] com http://mikeos.sourceforge.net/ Latest commit: 2016-12-04 ; Latest release: 2014-12-21
|
Vanadium OSVanadium OS is a multi-user Unix-like OS. i386, amd64. Fully protected mode. Memory, file and hardware protection. root and unprivileged users. GUI without X, modular kernel, and has a live floppy image with a single user mode! My homepage: http://www.durlej.net/contact ; project pages: http://www.durlej.net/v/ , http://www.durlej.net/nameless , https://github.com/p-durlej/newsys . One of the great features is that you can write C code and instantly compile it to execute |
Piotr Durlej, http://www.durlej.net/contact https://github.com/p-durlej/newsys Latest release: 2017-12-13, is active
|
tatOSA 32bit x86 OS written in assembly featuring a protected mode driver for USB flash drive and mouse. Source package includes tedit editor and ttasm assembler. Supports UHCI, EHCI, PS2 keyboard and 800x600x8bpp graphics - has a basic GUI |
https://github.com/tatimmer/tatOS Latest commit: 2016-07-23, is active
|
TempleOSTempleOS is a 64 bit lightweight OS with multitasking and multicore support, which is ring-0-only and works in a single address space. It provides the interface for communicating with God: the user has to choose a random number from the constantly changing sequences and then it is converted to the text interpretation. Whole OS with its' software has been single-handedly created during 15 years by Terry A Davis - who also developed a programming language called Holy C together with a special compiler for it. TempleOS supports the FAT32 and RedSea filesystems (the latter created by Terry) and also the file compression. It doesn't support the networking, partially for ideological reasons, but there are forks available with added functionality |
Terry A Davis, http://www.templeos.org Latest update: 2017-11-28, is active
|