Writing an OS in Rust

os.phil-opp.com

86 points·hacknrk··9 comments

It's the beginning of a kernel. It may expand in the future, but to me, calling it an OS is like building a door and calling it a house. It's inaccurate and it makes it sound greater than it currently is. I on the other hand do not want to make it sound less great of course, but what we call things does matter.

agreed, but it's a cool tutorial topic. I don't think anyone expects this to result in a useful OS, but it makes me contemplate learning about rust.

I got to reading some of the articles about a year ago. At first I had the same reaction. But I noticed that many people seem to think a kernel and OS are the same thing. I can't really blame the author for attracting more readers.

They are great articles in the end, very nice reads. Some of them going a long way into the details. Recommended to anyone interested in kernels (or to learn how a kernel is not an OS :))

Fair point. But let's keep in mind this is exactly how Linux started.

Obligatory plug for the same thing in big: https://www.redox-os.org/

They're only the same in that they're both a kernel in Rust: the parent blog is an educational/exploratory OS, whereas Redox seems to be aiming for real-world use and not pedagogy.

Ah, the Rust Evangelism Strike Force is finally back! Can't wait for the webshit weekly at n-gate.com

I'm not part of any strike force and I activly dislike envangelism. Still, I like this website very much.

This is not evangelism. Would you say that about a kernel in OCaml or Haskell?

Experimenting with safer language choices and see how that might help writing a kernel is a fun exercise. I am glad that Phil shared these articles, I learned a bunch from it.

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