OSDev.org
https://forum.osdev.org/

Writing a truly UNIX OS
https://forum.osdev.org/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=56348
Page 1 of 1

Author:  PavelChekov [ Sun Jul 03, 2022 1:50 pm ]
Post subject:  Writing a truly UNIX OS

Pretty much everything "unix" these days is actually Unix-like, but would it be possible to write an actual UNIX system, that is based off the original codebase, that would be a truly "modern" OS (e.g., 64-bit, multi-processing)?

Author:  iansjack [ Sun Jul 03, 2022 2:39 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Writing a truly UNIX OS

What, like Solaris? Or the various BSDs?

Author:  PavelChekov [ Sun Jul 03, 2022 2:42 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Writing a truly UNIX OS

iansjack wrote:
What, like Solaris?

Yes, I guess I should be more clear: would it be possible to make an open-source hobby OS, not a commercial one, that is actually UNIX?

Author:  iansjack [ Sun Jul 03, 2022 2:44 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Writing a truly UNIX OS

What, like FreeBSD?

Author:  PavelChekov [ Sun Jul 03, 2022 2:50 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Writing a truly UNIX OS

iansjack wrote:
What, like FreeBSD?

BSD has (to my knowledge) been rewritten to the point of not containing a single line of AT&T code.

Author:  iansjack [ Sun Jul 03, 2022 2:58 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Writing a truly UNIX OS

But the original AT&T code is copyright. You couldn’t use it in an open source OS.

Author:  nexos [ Sun Jul 03, 2022 5:24 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Writing a truly UNIX OS

illumos is a fork of when Solaris was open source. That is about as close as you can get to an open source true Unix.. TBH though, I'm sure there isn't any AT&T code left.

Author:  iansjack [ Mon Jul 04, 2022 12:14 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Writing a truly UNIX OS

Just as an aside, if we are talking about the original Unix code base, it was written in PDP11 assembly language. It’s difficult to think that that code would be very relevant today.

Author:  linguofreak [ Mon Jul 04, 2022 1:44 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Writing a truly UNIX OS

iansjack wrote:
Just as an aside, if we are talking about the original Unix code base, it was written in PDP11 assembly language. It’s difficult to think that that code would be very relevant today.


The very most original Unix code base was in PDP-7 assembly language, but that and the early PDP-11 releases were completely internal to Bell Labs and only ran on a few machines ever. By the time Unix was unleashed upon the world, it was written mostly in C.

Author:  linguofreak [ Mon Jul 04, 2022 1:49 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Writing a truly UNIX OS

iansjack wrote:
But the original AT&T code is copyright. You couldn’t use it in an open source OS.


v6, v7, (PDP-11) and 32v (the VAX port of v7) are now under BSD-style licenses. System III and later are still proprietary.

Author:  Voldemort [ Tue Jul 05, 2022 3:57 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Writing a truly UNIX OS

Hi Pavel,

Quote:
Yes, I guess I should be more clear: would it be possible to make an open-source hobby OS, not a commercial one, that is actually UNIX?


The tuhs project might be of some interest to you. https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl

xv6 is something you may find interesting as well.

RetroBsd might interest you too.
https://github.com/RetroBSD/retrobsd

Another interesting approach might be to get old unix'es working on new risc v boards as a proof of concept.
See this project for instance.
https://github.com/mit-pdos/xv6-riscv


~Voldemort~

Page 1 of 1 All times are UTC - 6 hours
Powered by phpBB © 2000, 2002, 2005, 2007 phpBB Group
http://www.phpbb.com/