osle

A tiny and mighty boot sector OS.

🚀 Try it out in the browser! 🚀

👀 Overview

OSle is a real-mode OS that fits in a boot sector.

It's written in x86 assembly and, despite its tiny size (only 510 bytes), it packs essential features like:

• Shell: Run commands and builtins.
• File System: Read, write, and find files on the system.
• Process Management: Cooperatively spawn child processes.
• Userland Software: Comes with pre-built software and an SDK to write your own.

Check out the online demo to see it in action!

📚 Creating your first OSle program

OSle includes a tiny Software Development Kit (SDK) that includes definitions and a toolchain to create your own OSle C or x86 Assembly programs.

Follow the step-by-step tutorial to write your first program!

🛠️ Development

To develop OSle and OSle programs you will need the following tools:

• nasm
• i686-elf-gcc
• GNU make (usually preinstalled)
• bochs (optional)

brew install nasm
brew install i686-elf-gcc
brew install bochs # optional, you can use Qemu if you prefer

apt install nasm gcc-i686-linux-gnu bochs # bochs is optional

Build and Run OSle locally

These recipes will compile OSle and use the SDK to compile and bundle all the pre-built programs. Using start will also run bochs right away.

# build and run OSle on bochs
make start

# or

# build osle
make osle
# use QEMU to run it
qemu-system-i386 -fda osle.img

Build and Run your OSle program

You can write OSle programs in x86 Assembly, like OSle itself, or in C. Check out the step-by-step tutorial to write your first program!

# ensure you have a working OSle image at osle.img
make osle

# compile your source to generate program.bin
sdk/occ program.c
# or
sdk/occ program.s

# bundle my_file.bin into the osle.img image
sdk/pack program.bin

# run it!
qemu-system-i386 -fda osle.img

Use OSle on a Real Device

Write the built image to a device using dd:

Warning

The following action can damage your hardware. We take no responsibility for any damage OSle might cause.

# generate an OSle image at osle.img
make osle

# write it on a device
sudo dd if=osle.img of=/dev/YOUR_DEVICE bs=512 count=1

🤝 Contributing

Feel free to explore the issues and pull requests to contribute or request features.

License

MIT