Basekernel is a simple operating system kernel for research, teaching, and fun.

Basekernel is not a complete operating system, but it is a starting point for those who wish to study and develop new operating system code. If you want to build something different than Windows, Linux, or Multics, Basekernel may be a good place to try out your new ideas.

Basekernel can boot an Intel PC-compatible virtual machine in 32-bit protected mode, with support for VESA framebuffer graphics, ATA hard disks, ATAPI optical devices, process management, memory protection, simple graphics, and basic filesystem. From there, it's your job to write user-level programs and expand the system.

To be clear, this is raw low-level code, not a production system. If you want to hack code and learn about operating system, you will like Basekernel. If you are looking for a new OS to run on your laptop, then this is not what you want.

This project is led by Prof. Douglas Thain at the University of Notre Dame. A variety of students have contributed to the code, including Jack Mazanec, Douglas Smith, Ethan Williams, Jon Westhoff, and Kevin Wern.

To learn more, see the Basekernel Wiki.

If you are building on a Linux-X86 machine and have the QEMU virtual machine installed, then it could be as easy as this to build and run:

git clone https://github.com/dthain/basekernel
cd basekernel
make
qemu-system-i386 -cdrom basekernel.iso

You should see something like this:

After some initial boot messages, you will see the kernel shell prompt. This allows you to take some simple actions before running the first user level program. To automatically boot the first available filesystem, whether on cdrom or harddisk, run automount:

automount

Then use the list command to examine the root directory:

list /

And use the run command to run a program. For example, /bin/manager.exe runs a simple four-pane window manager with several tasks in parallel. (Use TAB to switch focus between programs, and tilde to cancel out of the window manager.)

run /bin/manager.exe

Press TAB to change the focus between windows, and you can interact with each process in turn.

If you are building on any other type of machine (not Linux or not-X86) then you will need to build a cross-compiler toolchain first:

1 - Run ./build-cross-compiler.sh which will download and build the necessary compiler, linker, debugger, etc to create and run 32-bit X86 code. Be patient: this could take an hour or longer to complete.

2 - Double-check that the cross-compiler was built correctly:

i686-elf-gcc --version

3 - Modify Makefile.config and set CROSS_COMPILE=true

4 - Build with make and then proceed as normal.