“*nix” means a Unix-like OS just generally (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%2Anix), like for example in “Minix” and “Xenix”. Sticking “OS” to the end of an OS name is also commonplace. However, the title on the page is “The Learnix Operating System”, so the actual name seems to be just “Learnix”.
It’s arguably Nix and NixOS who have unnecessarily stepped into the “*nix” namespace without adding a distinguishing prefix.
> Others think someone from the Rust (programming language, not video game) development community was responsible due to how critical René has been of that project, but those claims are entirely unsubstantiated.
I wanted to share a quick piece of feedback from a potential reader's perspective: There are several small inconsistencies in the intro text (e.g., inconsistent capitalization of 'Rust' vs 'rust', grammar typos).
In a domain like OS development where extreme precision is required, these small errors can subconsciously signal to readers that the technical details might also be imprecise. A quick polish of the documentation would go a long way in establishing authority and trust for the rest of the book.
Hi!
I am the developer of this, and I really appreciate the feedback!!
The book is still on development and this is why I didn't even publish it here, I just recently finished the highlighter which was a lot of work, and I probably will require more.
Currently I am trying to make book and OS unique by developing and creating an explanation on AHCI, which I didn't see much on the internet. And then I try to handle all of the grammar, and typos
I couldn’t care less. It always pisses me off when a reviewer of my PR just flags the entire thing because of inconsistent capitalization. It’s the right correction and I always follow through but it’s also pedantic.
It’s technically more correct. But it’s also not a very big deal. Actually it matters more in code for search-ability but for documentation and comments? Give me a fucking break.
Attention to detail is important for many and is often a first touch with an end user. I agree with OP, if documentation is sloppy or inconsistent (I'm not saying the doc in question is because I haven't read it) it definitely reduces the impression that it's correct or reliable.
I've skipped even trying software because of poor documentation and so the response of:
I wish instead of discussing typos, folks her who surely know better (or author) could shed light on how this project compares to the many other existing projects, like
Hmm. Although I am not the biggest fan of Rust, I am a huge
fan of LFS/BLFS (https://www.linuxfromscratch.org/), so I am
all in favour of more high quality information here, including
the learnix-os website.
Google search has become so useless in
the last years that we all need to counter this evil force by
improving existing documentation, as well as adding new high
quality information - so from that point of view I am all in
favour of such projects, even if the language is not my favourite
one. Ideally we could have something like learnix for ALL
languages, even the old ones, and even the slow ones. Rust is
at the least fast, so it can be compared to C or C++, but I
think we also need this top-down approach for, let's say
something crazy ... python. (I get the "it is too slow" but
this is more about education; plus, computers will become
faster in the future too anyway.)
The name learnix may not be ideal though if it focuses on just one programming language. It should be a bit more like LFS/BLFS, and even LFS focuses mostly on shell scripts; I'd prefer an agnostic instruction set, but then they can on top of that use shell scripts of course, with additional scripts in other languages (I adapted all of that stuff into ruby, for instance, although not in a high quality way such as LFS/BLFS e. g. some of those scripts and deployments I wrote lack documentation for other people to adjust and adapt, simply due to lack of time - but I try to improve the documentation whenever time permits, it just has a lower priority compared to other obligations or work-related things).
Opening with a made-up quote (that is very simple to Google, which quickly confirms its apocryphal nature) doesn't inspire confidence in the factual accuracy of the remainder of the book...
This dedicates at least as much time to discussing the eccentricities of the underlying Rust implementation (and the Rust language itself) as it does to discussing the underlying low-level hardware/software concepts. Since this is very much still a work-in-progress (only the first three sections have been fully fleshed-out), I have a suggestion to make: please make it more language-agnostic, with a greater focus on the fundamentals versus the implementation.
One of the hardest parts of writing an os is learning and understanding how to make the toolchain work the way you need it to. I wouldn't consider that a negative to spend time discussing it in such detail. Otherwise you have no idea how to even apply the high level concepts.
> greater focus on the fundamentals versus the implementation
I am seeing this too. Folks are suddenly saying - lets implement this in Rust (or insert any other language here) without thinking about what this does to the fundamentals. A bandwagon effect which developers are swept by. And for managers it is a great way to show how innovative your team is. This applies not just to languages but entire development stacks almost like fashions in clothing.
When I started writing this OS, Rust was a pain, and I needed to understand a lot of things that I didn't know about the language, I can flag on some sections that people can skip because they are more language related, but I think that it is very important, and can be beneficial to people that come from other languages, or to people that want to understand rust more deeply.
In every chapter I try to initially explain the topic and then implement, or something in between. but I think the implementation is important because it completes the picture.
For what it's worth, I've found the Rust-y explanations well worth the read! Please keep them in, it's really interesting to read about the technicalities.
Eh... all the major OSs use C, anyways. For starters, (almost?) everyone is using a decent bit of assembly at the bottom. Then Linux is slowly adding Rust, and I was under the impression that NT spanned C, C++, and maybe some Rust now? And the moment we speak of the whole operating system and not just the kernel I think your claim collapses completely in the face of Darwin's Objective C and Windows doing... everything Microsoft feels like including.
Why always POSIX compliant? If its going to be a learning exercise or a hobby OS or just an exploration, why not throw POSIX out the window and start from scratch for designing the API?
To anyone wanting to learn about OS development, nothing beats MIT 6.824.
I finished the assignments in that course and that covers all the important aspects like processes, context switching, CPU modes, page tables and virtual memory and many other relevant topics like file systems, device drivers etc. And also it’s free.
From the table of contents this course gets too involved in ancillary matters like bootloaders or the Rust language itself whereas the focus of any OS development tutorial should be on core concepts like how processes are implemented, how context switching works, how paging and consequently multi level page tables (actually, in code) work etc.
This is an ambitious project. Might I respectfully suggest that you use your favourite AI (or an English-speaking friend) to fix your many grammatical errors and typos? For example "Note: ALL the syntax highlighting of the Rust code is custom and create by me! If you see and bug, please write in the comments or submit an issue." should be
"Note: ALL the syntax highlighting of the Rust code is custom and was created by me! If you see a bug, please leave a comment or submit an issue."
Also, Rust, not rust. And many more.
Bleh, I think a typo here and there is fine, you can grasp the meaning, and gives the writing style "character". Yes, it's dire but I'd take that over the soul-less LLM writing style.
I always wonder why these guides stick to x86(-64). I get that it's still the most popular processor architecture for desktop computing, but it's got a lot of complex legacy baggage that's an unnecessary cognitive burden for beginners. It's also a relatively uncommon target for real-world bare metal development. Why not target RISC-V? I've done a lot of OSDev in both x86 and RISC-V, and I think RISC-V is much more teachable. You don't want to bog the reader down trying to understand what protected mode, or the A20 line is, when you could just focus on more universal concepts.
This project started because I wanted to understand the linux that sits on my computer, which is x86. There is a possibility that on the future it will have multiple architectures supported, probably starting with arm, but I can't promise that
Skipped through the first pages and I really like your approach. Avoiding to use „magic“ libraries which abstract away a lot of the intricacies the lower levels is helping with the understanding.
I started my journey to develop my own little OS (https://github.com/jbreu/jos ) based on phil opperman‘s tutorial but quickly diverged from his exactly due to his use of such libraries.
I think it's really cool that they're using bare-metal Rust for this. It's a lot more accessible than C because the standard distribution (rustup) can work as a cross-compiler to a no-OS target out of the box. Deliberately avoiding dependencies makes me happy too, people really underestimate what you can do with Rust without relying on the whole dependency ecosystem, and this is better pedagogically because you can understand the whole system.
I'm rather amused at how https://www.learnix-os.com/ch01-02-booting-our-binary.html has you creating a 16-bit target that ostensibly uses 32-bit pointers in its data layout… presumably that doesn't actually work to compile normal code to (edit: …or does it?! What on earth does LLVM do with that then…) but I guess it works so long as it's just acting as a scaffold for inline assembly. It's cool they don't need to bring in a secondary toolchain for the 16-bit part of bootstrapping, even if I worry this might break in some future rustc/LLVM revision.
No word on whether it's finished or will ever be but already looks complete enough to me? I mean, the subject is endless and there are so many ways to do things. But as primer, it's pretty good as it is.
From the name I thought this was about learning NixOS, and they found a very clever name
Maybe the author could add a small note that this is not about that, and refer to something official about NixOS?
Anyway, I like the idea of the project!
“*nix” means a Unix-like OS just generally (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%2Anix), like for example in “Minix” and “Xenix”. Sticking “OS” to the end of an OS name is also commonplace. However, the title on the page is “The Learnix Operating System”, so the actual name seems to be just “Learnix”.
It’s arguably Nix and NixOS who have unnecessarily stepped into the “*nix” namespace without adding a distinguishing prefix.
Then I guess the OS part is redundant, since thr nix already implies an OS.
8 replies →
> “*nix” means a Unix-like OS just generally
"Unix-like OS" isn't a thing that has existed for two decades. Only Linux and Darwin survived, so don't do the "*nix" thing, please.
12 replies →
I had the same confusion. Even without considering NixOS, "learnix" is awkward to pronounce and somewhat pretentious.
I would suggest the name "Leanix" if the author is willing to rename.
It rhymes with Minix which is the OG curriculum for a POSIX kernel, and is "lean" in many senses of the word.
In any case an excellent writeup. It's detailed enough to implement in any programming language.
What's pretentious about learnix?
I don't find it awkward to pronounce in the least, and not in any way pretentious.
I think the name is fine as is.
I think that it's supposed to be a portmanteau of Unix and Learn.
> I would suggest the name "Leanix"
Then people would complain that it sounds too much like “Linux”.
1 reply →
I like the current name and already have the domain :|
I mean, it is about learning. It threw me for a loop too but I think it's actually reasonably appropriate.
Thought the same! Was a bit interested in learning Nix for a moment.
Will do!
[flagged]
> Others think someone from the Rust (programming language, not video game) development community was responsible due to how critical René has been of that project, but those claims are entirely unsubstantiated.
I wanted to share a quick piece of feedback from a potential reader's perspective: There are several small inconsistencies in the intro text (e.g., inconsistent capitalization of 'Rust' vs 'rust', grammar typos).
In a domain like OS development where extreme precision is required, these small errors can subconsciously signal to readers that the technical details might also be imprecise. A quick polish of the documentation would go a long way in establishing authority and trust for the rest of the book.
Hi! I am the developer of this, and I really appreciate the feedback!!
The book is still on development and this is why I didn't even publish it here, I just recently finished the highlighter which was a lot of work, and I probably will require more.
Currently I am trying to make book and OS unique by developing and creating an explanation on AHCI, which I didn't see much on the internet. And then I try to handle all of the grammar, and typos
I couldn’t care less. It always pisses me off when a reviewer of my PR just flags the entire thing because of inconsistent capitalization. It’s the right correction and I always follow through but it’s also pedantic.
It’s technically more correct. But it’s also not a very big deal. Actually it matters more in code for search-ability but for documentation and comments? Give me a fucking break.
Isn’t being technically correct an important thing for technical documentation that aims to be technically correct?
3 replies →
I see nothing pedantic in flagging capitalisation errors, but I see loads wrong with imposing one’s sloppiness on others.
1 reply →
Attention to detail is important for many and is often a first touch with an end user. I agree with OP, if documentation is sloppy or inconsistent (I'm not saying the doc in question is because I haven't read it) it definitely reduces the impression that it's correct or reliable.
I've skipped even trying software because of poor documentation and so the response of:
> Give me a fucking break.
...seems shallow / callous.
5 replies →
I wish instead of discussing typos, folks her who surely know better (or author) could shed light on how this project compares to the many other existing projects, like
https://github.com/cfenollosa/os-tutorial, https://littleosbook.github.io/, https://github.com/tuhdo/os01, https://github.com/prakhar1989/awesome-courses?tab=readme-ov...
or even just "OPERATING SYSTEMS DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION" by Tanenbaum
Well from what I can see all the examples you've linked are in C, and this one is Rust? That counts for something I guess?
What does that matter for learning how operating systems work?
But even then, SAYING that this is an how-to-build-an-OS project similar to those others, but focused on Rust, would be quite helpful.
Hmm. Although I am not the biggest fan of Rust, I am a huge fan of LFS/BLFS (https://www.linuxfromscratch.org/), so I am all in favour of more high quality information here, including the learnix-os website.
Google search has become so useless in the last years that we all need to counter this evil force by improving existing documentation, as well as adding new high quality information - so from that point of view I am all in favour of such projects, even if the language is not my favourite one. Ideally we could have something like learnix for ALL languages, even the old ones, and even the slow ones. Rust is at the least fast, so it can be compared to C or C++, but I think we also need this top-down approach for, let's say something crazy ... python. (I get the "it is too slow" but this is more about education; plus, computers will become faster in the future too anyway.)
The name learnix may not be ideal though if it focuses on just one programming language. It should be a bit more like LFS/BLFS, and even LFS focuses mostly on shell scripts; I'd prefer an agnostic instruction set, but then they can on top of that use shell scripts of course, with additional scripts in other languages (I adapted all of that stuff into ruby, for instance, although not in a high quality way such as LFS/BLFS e. g. some of those scripts and deployments I wrote lack documentation for other people to adjust and adapt, simply due to lack of time - but I try to improve the documentation whenever time permits, it just has a lower priority compared to other obligations or work-related things).
Opening with a made-up quote (that is very simple to Google, which quickly confirms its apocryphal nature) doesn't inspire confidence in the factual accuracy of the remainder of the book...
What do you mean by "made-up quote"? The author didn't make it up, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_journey_of_a_thousand_miles_...
This level of nit-picking is disheartening...
I think they meant:
> "If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough." - Albert Einstein
Which is listed at https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein#Misattributed
The reference is most likely to:
> "If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough."
Which TFA (and others) misattribute to Einstein
This dedicates at least as much time to discussing the eccentricities of the underlying Rust implementation (and the Rust language itself) as it does to discussing the underlying low-level hardware/software concepts. Since this is very much still a work-in-progress (only the first three sections have been fully fleshed-out), I have a suggestion to make: please make it more language-agnostic, with a greater focus on the fundamentals versus the implementation.
One of the hardest parts of writing an os is learning and understanding how to make the toolchain work the way you need it to. I wouldn't consider that a negative to spend time discussing it in such detail. Otherwise you have no idea how to even apply the high level concepts.
> greater focus on the fundamentals versus the implementation
I am seeing this too. Folks are suddenly saying - lets implement this in Rust (or insert any other language here) without thinking about what this does to the fundamentals. A bandwagon effect which developers are swept by. And for managers it is a great way to show how innovative your team is. This applies not just to languages but entire development stacks almost like fashions in clothing.
When I started writing this OS, Rust was a pain, and I needed to understand a lot of things that I didn't know about the language, I can flag on some sections that people can skip because they are more language related, but I think that it is very important, and can be beneficial to people that come from other languages, or to people that want to understand rust more deeply.
In every chapter I try to initially explain the topic and then implement, or something in between. but I think the implementation is important because it completes the picture.
For what it's worth, I've found the Rust-y explanations well worth the read! Please keep them in, it's really interesting to read about the technicalities.
They might be focused on programmers, not users. Programmers come first because otherwise users don't come at all.
C would have been a more natural/neutral choice to be honest for a project like this, since every OS actually used is written in C.
Eh... all the major OSs use C, anyways. For starters, (almost?) everyone is using a decent bit of assembly at the bottom. Then Linux is slowly adding Rust, and I was under the impression that NT spanned C, C++, and maybe some Rust now? And the moment we speak of the whole operating system and not just the kernel I think your claim collapses completely in the face of Darwin's Objective C and Windows doing... everything Microsoft feels like including.
This is a bad thing we should try to change
Why always POSIX compliant? If its going to be a learning exercise or a hobby OS or just an exploration, why not throw POSIX out the window and start from scratch for designing the API?
Source of ready-to-go software for use/testing?
That's actually an interesting idea, the main reason is that I wanted to take a doom port that is posix compliant and see if I can make it run
To anyone wanting to learn about OS development, nothing beats MIT 6.824.
I finished the assignments in that course and that covers all the important aspects like processes, context switching, CPU modes, page tables and virtual memory and many other relevant topics like file systems, device drivers etc. And also it’s free.
From the table of contents this course gets too involved in ancillary matters like bootloaders or the Rust language itself whereas the focus of any OS development tutorial should be on core concepts like how processes are implemented, how context switching works, how paging and consequently multi level page tables (actually, in code) work etc.
This is an ambitious project. Might I respectfully suggest that you use your favourite AI (or an English-speaking friend) to fix your many grammatical errors and typos? For example "Note: ALL the syntax highlighting of the Rust code is custom and create by me! If you see and bug, please write in the comments or submit an issue." should be "Note: ALL the syntax highlighting of the Rust code is custom and was created by me! If you see a bug, please leave a comment or submit an issue." Also, Rust, not rust. And many more.
That's a good suggestion to OP but as a user, I find it adds character and makes it feel human in an increasingly LLM-polished internet.
That's how I used to feel about spelling and grammar checkers. I was wrong. Maybe you are, too.
Because I didn't really publish it, I didn't check all the grammar and type errors
This is something I will improve when the initial release will come
And* many more ;)
Thanks ....
Bleh, I think a typo here and there is fine, you can grasp the meaning, and gives the writing style "character". Yes, it's dire but I'd take that over the soul-less LLM writing style.
I always wonder why these guides stick to x86(-64). I get that it's still the most popular processor architecture for desktop computing, but it's got a lot of complex legacy baggage that's an unnecessary cognitive burden for beginners. It's also a relatively uncommon target for real-world bare metal development. Why not target RISC-V? I've done a lot of OSDev in both x86 and RISC-V, and I think RISC-V is much more teachable. You don't want to bog the reader down trying to understand what protected mode, or the A20 line is, when you could just focus on more universal concepts.
In case anyone is curious, I very recently released a small demo kernel for RISC-V here: https://github.com/ajxs/straylight
This project started because I wanted to understand the linux that sits on my computer, which is x86. There is a possibility that on the future it will have multiple architectures supported, probably starting with arm, but I can't promise that
Skipped through the first pages and I really like your approach. Avoiding to use „magic“ libraries which abstract away a lot of the intricacies the lower levels is helping with the understanding.
I started my journey to develop my own little OS (https://github.com/jbreu/jos ) based on phil opperman‘s tutorial but quickly diverged from his exactly due to his use of such libraries.
This only covers what's in https://wiki.osdev.org/Bare_Bones, but in Rust, right?
I think it's really cool that they're using bare-metal Rust for this. It's a lot more accessible than C because the standard distribution (rustup) can work as a cross-compiler to a no-OS target out of the box. Deliberately avoiding dependencies makes me happy too, people really underestimate what you can do with Rust without relying on the whole dependency ecosystem, and this is better pedagogically because you can understand the whole system.
I'm rather amused at how https://www.learnix-os.com/ch01-02-booting-our-binary.html has you creating a 16-bit target that ostensibly uses 32-bit pointers in its data layout… presumably that doesn't actually work to compile normal code to (edit: …or does it?! What on earth does LLVM do with that then…) but I guess it works so long as it's just acting as a scaffold for inline assembly. It's cool they don't need to bring in a secondary toolchain for the 16-bit part of bootstrapping, even if I worry this might break in some future rustc/LLVM revision.
Title should be LearnixOS : POSIX compliant OS implemented in Rust.
If you are interested in Nix but dont want to abandon MacOS you should check out Nix Darwin.
I should do the same book in Swift; it would be a very interesting project! I wish I had that kind of time…
I spotted at least 3 typos in the first minute. Typos are really easily detected and fixed with LLMs (one really good usage of them).
But it's nice to have non-LLM written text. Still the many typos are annoying and distracting.
Looking forward to going through the lessons
I hope this builds on phil-opp's previous work which is IMO stellar.
I plan to cover more, like disk drivers, file systems, processes, shell, user space, processes, until we can run a working program!
Hopefully, also networking
What's the status on that? Did the series ever get finished?
No word on whether it's finished or will ever be but already looks complete enough to me? I mean, the subject is endless and there are so many ways to do things. But as primer, it's pretty good as it is.
FLY
what's FLY?
pretty sure it means cool like 'thats so fly'