OSDev.org

Hey guys, so I've been looking over tutorials and such lately and I see that many of the tutorials say that they are creating a 'toy' OS.

What is the difference between a full blown OS and a 'toy' OS? Is it just the feature set?

I've looked at some of the JamesM tutorials and the end result looks pretty functional.

Clarifications? Thoughts?

IMHO a "Toy" OS is an amateur operating system, while a "Real" OS is a commercial one.

I really don't believe that an operating system can be "full blown". There is always things you can add to it. There's no limit to OSDEV!!

But still, an OS is an OS is an OS. OS Development is still OS Development. The fact that an OS is a "toy" operating system doesn't make it any less advanced".

...and "Toy" OSes can become "Real" OSes and vice versa. "Toy" OSes can even be more advanced than "Real" OSes.

Yep, that's all I have to say.

Linux started out as a small hobby OS and look where it got to.

-JL

Hi,



IMHO the difference is the intentions of the developers. Different feature sets are just the result of those different intentions.

For an example, consider something like whether or not to support multi-CPU. Someone that only intends to write a toy OS could easily skip it entirely; while someone that intends to write a full blown OS doesn't really have a choice.



Yeah - now Linux is a small hobby OS with a huge amount of hacks and patches slapped on top to make it useful. Some of these additions fit the original design, some of the additions involved a huge amount of work to change the original design, and some of the additions remind me of this.


Cheers,

Brendan

I agree with Brendan on ... all points.

A toy OS can be anything from a tutorialized version of a full-blown OS to make things easier to learn about, or it could be a very lop-sided OS where it is meant to show-off or emphasize a particular feature (GUI for example) but will skip lower-level functions that are not necessary for the minimal structure.

I'd probably say that any OS is a toy until you can compile it on itself - ie. as soon as it is able to run applications and libraries and you port a compiler, editor etc. to it.

My own OS will always be a toy, irrespective of the fact that it might become self-hosted one day.

I fully disagree.

So most embedded OS's out there are toy OS's? I do not regard my OS as a toy OS just because it does not have a text editor, I believe it's functionality is well developed and suits the purpose intended, and that purpose does not require a compiler, assembler, editor, GUI, etc...

I would say that a "Real" OS is that one which fulfills all the computing needs of it's target audiences! If an OS fullfills these needs then it can be categorized as an "Real" OS or a "Full Blown OS". And it can be any OS, written for an embbeded system or a microprocessor or even a micro controller.

I'd say the quickest "toy OS" test is the question: Would you trust it in a production environment?

Although there are edge cases where this question fails, which may relegate it to the category of "toy test." But don't worry, I'll add error checking in version 2.

I feel you should always start of with 'Toy OS'. This will actually turn out to be your brain child and something that has the features that you would love to have and the features that will enable you to be productive, or have your set of entertainment stuff. If you go worrying of the commercial or the acceptance aspects of it, you might not get what you expect...

The best concise definition I could come up with is the following:

Because of all definitions of 'toy' OS I've read here, I have following question: Does MS-DOS is a 'toy' OS???

Hi,



IMHO, no - DOS was always intended to be a commercial OS.

DOS may not be a good, well designed commercial OS, especially when you compare it to modern OSs (and OSs that existed on large mainframes at the time), but DOS wasn't meant for large mainframes, and for desktop systems the target market's expectations have changed a lot over the years.

Despite how good/bad it was, DOS was a successful commercial OS - I hope I sell as many copies of my OS...


Cheers,

Brendan

here here!