Zernel

WARNING this project currently will not be maintained, the author is focused on ai based projects and research like https://github.com/andres-m-rodriguez/Grigori and https://github.com/andres-m-rodriguez/zbpe the project will later on be continued but for now it will remain stale

Zernel is a hobby OS kernel written in Zig. The goal? Boot into a TUI file browser with a custom filesystem that persists to disk. No more, no less. When I can navigate files with arrow keys in my own operating system, this project is done and I can mass-allocate new problems for myself.

The Vision

┌─ ZERNEL ─────────────────────────────────────┐
│ FILES              │ PREVIEW                 │
│ > hello.txt        │ Hello world!            │
│   notes.txt        │ This is my first file   │
│   todo.txt         │ written in my own OS.   │
│                    │                         │
│                    │                         │
│────────────────────│                         │
│ [↑↓] navigate  [Enter] open  [N]ew  [D]elete │
└──────────────────────────────────────────────┘

That's it. That's the whole thing. Boot → TUI → files persist → done.

Features (Eventually)

• Boot (allegedly)
• Print to screen (working on it)
• Keyboard input
• Text mode shell
• In-memory filesystem
• ATA PIO disk driver
• Custom filesystem with persistence
• TUI file browser ← finish line

The "Not Doing" List

Scope is how projects get finished. Zernel will NOT have:

• Networking
• Multiple processes / multitasking
• Graphics beyond text mode
• USB support
• AHCI/NVMe (ATA PIO only)
• Subdirectories (flat file list)
• Any feature that sounds cool but prevents me from finishing

Building

zig build

Running

qemu-system-x86_64 -kernel zig-out/bin/zernel

(This will probably change as I figure out what I'm doing)

Why?

Because I wanted to mass-allocate problems for myself.

License

Do whatever you want with this. If you somehow make money from my kernel that boots 60% of the time, congrats.