There hasn’t been much development in the field of developing an operating system since this field is considered very challenging. It is often considered as the “pinnacle of programming”. Though nonetheless some of the programmers took the initiative to develop an Operating System Using C many of them failed to produce a properly functioning system. If someone is able to finish developing a properly functioning operating system then they are considered to be one of the top-notch programmers of the world.
What is an operating system?
In the very beginning, the computers did not have operating systems. The programs that used to run on these early systems just included the codes that were necessary to run the computer, communicate with the hardware connected, and perform various mathematical computations which they were programmed for. This made even the easiest programs very complex.
As there were more developments in the computer systems, it got even more complex and powerful, so it was practically impossible to write programs that would function for both, a useful application as well as an operating system. In order to overcome this issue individual owners of the mainframe computers
A brief history of operating systems:
General Motors created the first operating system in the year 1956. The operating system that they created was for running a single Mainframe computer by IBM. After that, mean IBM mainframe owners joined the pursuit and made their own operating systems. In those early days of the operating system, the operating systems varied greatly from one computer to another. The operating system in that time made programming easier but one great disadvantage they had was the programs were not shareable. For using a program that was written for one mainframe to run the same task as another mainframe, the entire program had to be rewritten.
To take care of this problem, in the 1960s IBM started to develop its own operating system. They were the first of computer manufacturers who began to distribute their own operating systems with their computers. Slowly and steadily many other Computer vendors started creating operating systems for their computers. In the latter of the 1960s, we witnessed the first version of the Unix operating system. Unix operating system was written in the C programming language and was made to be available free of cost in its early years of development. It could be ported to systems very easily and received great approval from everyone.
In 1985, a graphical user interface was created under the name of Windows. It was paired with MS-Dos. Some of the modern-day operating systems that we have today include Microsoft Windows, Linux, Apple OS, and so on.
Every operating system mainly consists of two parts which are:
- The kernel.
- The system programs.
The kernel forms the core of any operating system. When the computer starts up, it is the first program that is loaded. The kernel is responsible for managing all the computer resources. It also handles all the requests that it receives from the system programs and applications in the computer.
System programs are programs that run on top of the kernel. System programs are necessary for connecting the Kernel to the user applications and other peripheral devices. The system program does not perform any other useful work on the computer. Some examples of system programs are device drivers, networking programs, system utilities, and so on.
What You Need To Know:
There are a large number of things that you need to know before embarking on a journey of operating system development. This journey is very long and it is important to take the right steps such that you don’t feel lost. The necessary steps you need to take before starting to learn operating system development are:
- Knowledge of basic computer science.
- Best practices of programming
- Theory of computer programming
- Both high-level and low-level languages of programming
After going through these steps, you can be considered more or less ready for Operating System development.
C in Operating System Development:
In the present day, there are various high-level programming languages that you can use for developing an operating system. A large number of resources are also available for learning high-level programming languages. It is recommended that you learn C for the purpose of operating system development. There are some extremely good resources that you can use to become proficient in C programming for operating systems. Once you have achieved that, you can go through the tutorials that are available for operating system development. In this journey of becoming an operating system developer, joining an operating system development community is also a good idea. In an operating system development community, you can find other programmers such as yourself and learn from each other.
Conclusion:
One of the most difficult tasks that a programmer can undertake is learning how to develop the operating system. However if you successfully e e build a working operating system then it will be a great mark that you can make as a programmer. Building an Operating System would mean that you are a competent programmer and that you deeply understand how things like computer programs, hardware, and processors really work together. It is a whole different feeling to understand all these workings and create something that the others take for granted like a functioning operating system. We hope that this article was insightful to you and that you can progress in developing operating systems with an age over others.