Alder Kernel

A hobby operating system kernel, written from scratch in C and x86 assembly, for learning.

source MIT license author

about

Monolithic kernel for i386 (32-bit x86). Built for learning and experimentation — feel free to use it as a base for your own OS.

features

build & run

requires: nasm gcc make ld qemu

git clone https://github.com/loren-wastaken/alderkernel
cd alderkernel
make
make run

To boot with a disk:

qemu-img create -f raw disk.img 2G
make run_wdisk

syscalls

Still mostly stubbed. Full table in syscalls.md.

decnamestatus
0readtodo
1writetodo
2request more ramtodo
16kernel panicdone
17force divide-by-zero (test)done

running apps

Not possible yet. Needs a disk installer, partition detection, a real on-disk filesystem, and an ELF32 loader before user apps can run — right now the kernel's filesystem is an in-RAM tree seeded at boot, nothing more. Full plan in apps.md.