Small 16 bit operating system kernel project
PengOS is a 16 bit operating system and environment for testing and running bare-metal programs.
Most operating systems (like Windows and Linux) have measures put in place that prevent any "raw" binaries (which are just pure x86 machine code) from running. This means that, normally, the only way to run bare metal programs is for the bootloader to boot into that program directly, which has the issue of requiring you to give up your operating system altogether. PengOS seeks to rectify this issue by providing an environment where all programs run directly on bare metal. When you run a program in PengOS, the shell simply jumps CPU execution to the contents of the binary that was run.
Getting PengOS up and running takes only a few steps:
First, make sure you have QEMU and NASM installed by running whereis qemu followed by whereis nasm in Bash (if you have them installed, a file path should show up. If you don't, you'll likely just see qemu: and/or nasm: printed to the screen). If you don't have one or both of the programs installed, use the package manager of your choice to install them. We recommend installing the qemu-full option to minimize the amount of setup you need to do post-installation. On Arch based distributions, this is done through
sudo pacman -S qemu-full
NASM can be installed on Arch based distributions through
sudo pacman -S nasm
(please make sure you know what you're doing before running random shell commands that you've found off the internet)
Please read this tutorial from GitHub which explains how to clone a repository to your local system. Follow these steps with the PengOS repository in order to have all of the PengOS files downloaded onto your computer.
With QEMU installed, you can launch PengOS in a virtualized environment. First, make sure you have virtualization enabled on your machine (this is usually done through BIOS). Next, use the command line and navigate to your local clone of PengOS, then type the following command:
./run
This will launch PengOS in a QEMU window, which should show up on screen.
(NOTICE: PLEASE DO NOT FOLLOW THE INSTRUCTIONS IN THIS SECTION UNLESS YOU KNOW WHAT YOU'RE DOING. IT IS VERY POSSIBLE TO BRICK A USB OR PERMENANTLY LOSE DATA IF YOU FOLLOW THESE INSTRUCTIONS BLINDLY. MAKE SURE YOU UNDERSTAND WHAT THESE COMMANDS DO BEFORE RUNNING THEM.)
If you intend to install PengOS as an operating system onto another machine, navigate to your local clone of PengOS and run the following commands:
nasm boot+kernel.asm -f bin -o ./builds/full.bin
dd if=./builds/full.bin of=/dev/[NAME OF USB DEVICE FILE] && sync
From there, it is up to you to boot PengOS from your USB drive.