Prerequisites:

• i686 GCC Cross-compiler (The source code is available at https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/gcc/gcc-14.1.0/)

• i686 Binutils (Source code at https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/binutils/) (the latest version is at the bottom of the list)

• Make

  Available as make on most package managers. Used for building the project

• xorriso

  Available as xorriso on most package managers. Used for burning to the USB drive

• Grub 2

  Install grub2-common with your package manager. Used for creating the boot image

• Qemu-i386 (optional, for testing)

  Available as qemu-system-x86 on most package managers.

Building

To build the cross-comipling tools, follow this tutorial for the i686-elf target: https://wiki.osdev.org/GCC_Cross-Compiler

(Note: This takes a while! Do this first and be prepared to wait).

In the project root folder, run make build.

To test the operating system, run make test.

Note:

The operating system requires a hard disk image formatted as FAT16 for testing. You can make one with:

dd if=/dev/zero of=image.img bs=1M count=32
mkfs.fat -F16 image.img

If you plan to run it on your computer, make sure you have a hard drive that doesn't have anything on it and is formatted as FAT16.

Installation

This project currently runs off of a USB stick. To burn to the stick, first run lsblk to find your stick's device name (mine was /dev/sdb). Then, run dd if=myos.iso of=/dev/sdb. Substitute your device name for /dev/sdb. Then, eject and remove your USB drive, plug it into a computer, and press your computer's boot menu button (refer to this table to find it) and select "Removable drive" or "USB". Enjoy the operating system!