x86_64 OS (kernel) made completely from scratch in Assembly & Rust

• Build from source on Linux
• Run in QEMU on Linux
• Run on real hardware
• Appendix
  • Development status
  • Additional info
  • Credits

Requirements:

• Git version control system
• Rust toolchain

Steps:

1. Install the nightly toolchain:

rustup toolchain install nightly

2. Install required components:

rustup component add rust-src --toolchain nightly-x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu && rustup component add llvm-tools-preview --toolchain nightly-x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu && cargo install bootimage

3. Create a local clone of the repository:

git clone [email protected]:adamperkowski/highlightos.git && cd highlightos

4. cd into the shell/ directory:

cd shell

5. Build the bootable binary:

cargo +nightly bootimage --release

This command will create the target/target/release directory in which you'll find the bootimage-hlshell.bin binary file.

Requirements:

• Git version control system
• NASM Assembly compiler

Steps:

1. Create a local clone of the repository:

git clone [email protected]:adamperkowski/highlightos.git && cd highlightos

2. cd into the asm/ directory:

cd asm

3. Compile the bootable binary:

nasm -f bin boot.asm -o boot.bin

This command will generate & place the boot.bin file inside of the current directory.

Requirements:

• QEMU (full package)
• A bootable binary of HighlightOS. You can download one from releases or you can build it yourself.

Steps:

1. cd into directory that contains the binary.
2. Run the following command:

qemu-system-x86_64 -drive format=raw,file=<your_binary_filename>.bin

You can also flash the binary image onto a USB stick and boot it on a real machine.

You can flash it by running the following command:

dd if=<your_binary_filename>.bin of=/dev/sdX && sync

Did you know we have a IRC channel? It's #highlightos on libera.chat.

List of built-in commands and features is available here.
To gain further information on HighlightOS, we invite you to visit the wiki.

Using precompiled binaries from the code section of the repo is not recommended.

HUGE thanks to everyone contributing:

Some parts of the code are inspired by blog_os. Great project!

Copyleft 2024 Adam Perkowski