this post was submitted on 01 Sep 2025
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Linux
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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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Have you done OS dev before? Do you know a systems programming language? Learn an appropriate language if you don't already know one, then look up OS dev books/guides online for that language. Someone's probably made a minimal kernel in that language you can refer to.
You mentioned postmarketOS so you could have a look here and here.
Thank you - OS dev is new to me. I don't have any real competency in any language yet, so I'll make that a priority. I'll use postmarketOS as my main point of reference, so I'll take a look through their docs as a starting point.
I'd recommend learning either C or Rust. Pretty much every mainstream OS will be written in C. Rust is newer but known for its safety and a much more modern language. There are other systems programming languages but those two are very popular and will have lots of OS dev resources, plus if you are working with existing codebases they will be in C. Other languages may be entirely possible to write an OS in, and for really big ones like C++ and Go I'm sure there's lots of OS dev resources for them too, I'm just not familiar with the OS dev ecosystem for those languages (and at the very least I hope it's not controversial to say C++ has been made obsolete by the new systems languages...)
Great, C it is for a starting point