Submitted by Do you want a hobby operating system with a desktop for a microcontroller-based computer? Sylphide OS is a new project aiming to build just that.
For the last few weeks, I’ve worked on a new pet project: an operating system for computers based on microcontrollers. There aren’t many yet, but I expect them to be more and more common.
Why MCU computers ? You get a relatively very simple platform, booting straight to your code (or almost), and you can understand the whole architecture. Exactly as it was with home computers long ago. And not at all what you get with modern computers. Even booting involves lot of very different systems, black magic, and even blog/proprietary software.
↫ Thomas Capricelli
It’s very early in development, but by building it atop FreeRTOS, Capricelli had a head-start. It’s got a basic desktop, one that might need some changes to avoid the lawyers. The code’s open source, of course.
This looks interesting, and wish them the best.
However with their high commit count to code ratio, my “vibe” check does not pass. I’ll leave it there and still grant them the benefit of the doubt
That being said… if you are interested in a “desktop on microcontroller”, where that $8 device is much better than the computer I had in college…
Raspberry RP2040 / RP2350: Can run Linux natively with “NOMMU” version
(2040 with RISV-C emulation: https://github.com/tvlad1234/pico-rv32ima,
2350 is native, but requires SparkFun, or similar, 8MB PSRAM version)
ESP-32: Same, emulated on low end, real on higher end with RISC-V cores
I’m not saying this to diss on the new project. But to set up expectations. The modern tiny microcontrollers are actually pretty capable devices with multiple cores, “high” amount of RAM (megabytes, but still), networking, and sometimes even HDMI outputs.
This makes it much more fun and interesting, as the custom OS landscape opens up. It is not so much that Linux dominates (unlike full Raspberry PIs and similar which has gigabytes of RAM), nor it is impractical to run anything
Both hardware, and software are iterating fast in this arena.
Would be interesting to watch this space.