dzOS (DirectZ OS) is my attempt at building an operating system kernel.

It uses the Limine bootloader.

• Instruction support
  • RTC (Real-Time-Clock) - Fast ASM PIT Calibrate
  • FPU (Floating Point Unit)
  • SSE
• GDT (Global Descriptor Table)
• IDT (Interrupt Descriptor Table)
• IOAPIC/LAPIC support
• Interrupts
• Virtual Memory mapping (4KB Page Size)
• dynamic kernel memory allocation (kmalloc/kfree) that manages space efficiently
• ELF binary loader
• Kernelspace + Userspace
• Device detection + Driver registration
  • PS/2
  • PCI
• Basic NVMe support
• simple dzFS filesystem
• syscall and interrupt support
• Basic serial IO support
• Uses the Limine provided framebuffer, and flanterm terminal, to print kernel init to the framebuffer

To get started with dzOS, make sure you have the following tools in your PATH

• clang/clang++
• xxd
• xorriso
• qemu
• ninja-build

Then to configure and build..

cmake -GNinja -B build -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=[Debug/Release]
cmake --build build

cmake --build build --target qemu

In a terminal, run:

cmake --build build --target qemu-debug

Then in another terminal, run:

gdb build/isoroot/boot/kernel.elf
(gdb) b kmain
(gdb) target remote localhost:1234
(gdb) continue

As of latest master branch, only unix-like OS can build dzOS, so, if your host is Windows, it is recommended to use WSL.

• OSDev wiki
• CrowOS - Great starting reference; dzOS has changed significantly since starting with code from CrowOS
• Limine Bootloader
• Intel Software Developers Manual
• Various other developers via Discord
• AI tools such as ChatGPT/Claude/Gemini for information gathering and help with problem solving
• Myself and many years experience programming the full stack

• Unix-like Kernel that is secure.
• Data is kept private and free from tamper (peace)
• Custom Windowing interface that may mirror many protocols
• Userspace apps
• Filesystem permissions
• Embedded DirectZ Editor (a userspace program)