Show HN: Aurion OS – A 32-bit GUI operating system written from scratch in C
33 points - today at 6:33 PM
Hi HN! I'm 13 and I built Aurion OS as a solo learning project over 14 days (~12 hours/day).
It's a 32-bit x86 operating system written entirely in C and x86 Assembly with no external libraries.
What it has: Custom bootloader and kernel VESA framebuffer graphics (1920x1080, double-buffered) Window manager with draggable, overlapping windows macOS-inspired dock with transparency PS/2 keyboard and mouse drivers ATA hard drive driver with filesystem PCI bus enumeration RTL8139 network driver (WIP) Real-time clock Runs on just 16MB RAM (up to 10 windows simultaneously)
Built-in apps: Terminal (with DOS mode), Notepad (save/load), Calculator, Paint (multiple colors and brush sizes), Snake game, Settings (theme switching), and System Info.
Currently works best on QEMU, VirtualBox, and VMware. Real hardware support is still a work in progress.
Next goal: TCP/IP networking stack.
I'd love any feedback, suggestions, or criticism. This is my first OS project and I learned mass amounts while building it. Happy to answer any technical questions!
Comments
It's good to have support for real networking hardware, but consider virtio-net as well. A lot of VMs support it and it's more streamlined. 32-bit x86, bios boot means doing a lot of things for compatibility with systems that were old enough to drink before you were born... skipping to simplified virtualized interfaces wherever possible makes a lot of sense; even if your OS can run in 16 MB of ram, you're probably not going to run it on a 486 with 16 MB of RAM and a real parallel IDE drive ... at least not at first. You can always come back and make that work if you want... deferring tricky things until later so you can work on the fun stuff keeps you having fun and engaged with your project.
Also, consider trying to get your OS running on v86. It's fun having your hobby OS work in a browser. The biggest limitations I've run into are 32-bit x86 only, single processor only; but those might not be that big of a deal... looks like your OS is also 32-bit x86 only, and I don't see anything about SMP in your project. If there's anything missing from v86 that you depend on, I've had a wonderful experience with submitting PRs; copy often reworks my patches to be much better before applying them, which I always appreciate rather than a back and forth attempt to get me to make it better :) I've also seen copy (and others) take reported issues and fix them, if you've got a problem that you can't write a patch to resolve.
> Real hardware support is still a work in progress.
I ran into a fair amount of issues with 16-bit code; qemu doesn't check segmentation limits but real hardware does. Real hardware would crash, but it worked fine in qemu. My kernel is multiboot and I use 3rd party bootloaders, but I do SMP, on x86, that involves starting the Application Processors in 16-bit real mode and then moving them into 32-bit modes, but you have to do the segmentation dance correctly until you get there; doesn't help when qemu just lets you do whatever. :P
PS 12 hour days are a lot; hope you're getting all your other stuff done :P
Everything in that account has appeared in the last 6mo. Very unnatural commit activity, and clearly contradicts the claim that this is their first OS project. Is linked to a faceless YT channel.
What was your inspiration for the filesystem?