Star Why you Shouldn't Write your Own Kernel Anymore
Linked by Emmanuel Marty on Thu 2nd Sep 2004 07:36 UTC
OSNews, Generic OSes As a programmer and manager of embedded software products for a living, I think that operating system programming is so much fun that it will eventually be outlawed. I've previously published two articles on OSNews, So, you want to write an operating system and Climbing the kernel mountain, and tried to summarize my experience in designing operating system kernels as well as technical traps that can be easily avoided.
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Nope.
by Solar on Thu 2nd Sep 2004 10:27 UTC

@ stew:

> The real reason why you shouldn't write your own
> kernel: Because you don't like having to write your
> own drivers.

Repetition #{I don't really know anymore}:

There are cross-platform driver architectures readily available, like SNAP or UDI. Every single OS out there could work with a shared pool of device drivers. No reinventing the wheel, no hardware compatibility lists.

But Microsoft doesn't embrace them because they would be hilariously stupid to give away one of their core advantages - drivers.

The FSF doesn't embrace them because those architectures don't fit their idea of "freedom" (or rather, because it would give away one of *their* core advantages - drivers).

@ Mystilleef:

> All the operating system that tried to be original,
> that reivented the wheel, died.

And many of them left behind new, original things that others picked up. Preemptive multitasking wasn't an invention of MS-DOS, Linux / BSD, or AppleOS.

And much of what was left behind that died has yet to be picked up by someone. Much of this has fallen into forgetfulness, with only a few people still remembering the ease of navigating a file structure that could be understood by mere mortals, adding a .catalog in your native language the application programmer didn't even know about, or backing up your OS to a ZIP drive with a simple copy operation and booting from that copy without further ado.

Windows, Linux, and MacOS suck in more than one regard, and that's the raison d'etre for many OS projects out there. But the big three are very happy with their oligarchy, and don't consider for a second of evening the playing grounds (see my driver comment above).

Either one of the big three finally gets the act together and produces an OS that's actually easy, fun, and painless to use, or alternative OS projects are here to stay.