Thursday, January 31, 2008

Build your own operating system in .NET with Cosmos

Cosmos looks like a project that could be fun to play with. It's goal is to allow you to build your own operating system in .NET!

The magic happens by compiling .NET CIL bytecode to x86 assembly.

The core is written in C#, but you should be able to use any .NET language to add your own extensions.

You can deploy your build as an ISO or PXE, or run it under a number of emulators like QEMU, VMWare and VirtualPC.

The project is still in the early stages, providing just console interaction. Future releases will add PCI enumeration, Ethernet, TCP/IP, extended file system support and maybe even GUIs.

UPDATE: There appear to be a couple of competitors, the open source SharpOS (very, very early stages) and Microsoft Singularity (available only to academic institutions).

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

hi!

Doesn't the user need to have Microsoft library if he/she is building their own Operating System(OS) in .NET environment.

Have a great day..

Robert Maldon said...

hi!

You are correct, to build the OS you need .NET. However, once it has been built to assembly you don't need .NET to run it.

Renee Culver said...

Hi,

I used to work professionally on one of the worlds best operating systems.

Mananged code, is run by operating systems. That's in part, the definition of "manged code".

Renee

Renee Culver said...

"Doesn't the user need to have Microsoft library if he/she is building their own Operating System(OS) in .NET environment. "

Well to Illuminate this comment I'll ask a question. What was life like before Bill Gates came around?

Renee