Trends in user questions

[AndrewAPrice]

I've noticed a few trends the types of things users post about. First off, most users' first post is something along the lines of:
"I'm going to make an os. It will run Windows programs and Linux programs and support every device there is."
and usually ends with the question:
"What steps do I need to make a GUI with a desktop and a mouse? We don't have to get complex (e.g. no background image)."

If they're up to the stage of implementing a GUI system, I doubt a background image is going to be their most complex obstacle.

Most questions in the OS development forum are about the basics (getting a timer to work, interrupts, GDT, jumping into C++ code, etc). I've contributed to some of them Occasionally there are a few more advance topics, which are interesting to read.

Anyway, this made me think, that lots of OS's don't get any further than "Hello World" with maybe a keyboard/timer interrupt. It seems a real pity to see countless hours->days->months->years go into a project that gets forgotten about.

I really don't think there's a point in what I'm posting about. I guess I'm trying to say I want to see more keep going with their OS's rather than give up.

[Solar]

In my perception, the majority of people trying an OS project are students. Their OS projects usually die when they finally realize one (or more) of three things:

- the enormity of a "real" OS project,
- the hopelessness of ever drawing enough interest to grow a software base to speak of, or
- that their parents actually were correct when they told them how easy life is as a student, i.e. when they get a steady girlfriend, a day job, or both.

Add to that the learning curve, which results in the veterans here asking their questions in Google or the library, and you get the rather high percentage of repetitive beginner questions.

A place like OSDev.org is good to get you started, and as a place for hanging around with others sharing your passion. Once you get to the point where you're designing your GUI API or something, you know where to look for answers, and anyway explaining your environment to others takes more time than figuring it out yourself. Besides, by the time you usually have built a community of sorts yourself...