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Show HN: My from-scratch OS kernel that runs DOOM

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Hi there! I've been on-and-off working on TacOS for a few months, which follows some UNIX-derived concepts (exec/fork, unix-style VFS, etc) and is now able to run a port of Doom, with a fairly small amount of modifications, using my from-scratch libc. The performance is actually decent compared to what I expected. Very interested to hear your thoughts. Thank you!

Hi, congratulations! You must be feeling proud. Nice choice of proof of concept (DOOM).

Sorry to disappoint you but all I have are some noob questions.

What would be the steps to run this on a laptop? I take it that after building it there would be a process similar to, say, setting up dual-boot in a Windows PC? (Whoa I'm asking a stranger on the Internet how to run dangerous software on my computer...)

If one wanted to undertake such a project, do you have any recommendations of textbooks or other reading material? I had some OS & related courses in university (I'm EE, so computer-adjacent), but they were all very abstract / high level / conceptually-focused. I'd love something more concrete. It doesn't have to be x64.

1 day agoby planck_tonne

Slight tangent but I've wondered about something similar to this, has there been much initiative to make games that directly boot on modern PC hardware? So not load a full OS but just go directly to the game. Similar to older generation gaming consoles. It should be possible, granted if you want to stay simple, things like wifi, bt, GPU would be hard to utilize without modern drivers, but a keyboard and mouse should be fairly doable as they seem to have some sort of default BIOS access? (probably wrong terms there but hopefully my point is understandable)

13 hours agoby xhrpost

Ok, but can your tacos run DOOM??

I kid I kid ;) That's a commendable effort and nice job! Question though: was it an effort to make TacOS using DOOM as a "standard" or was it an effort to make an OS dedicated to running DOOM run from scratch?

And I don't ask from any place but actual curiosity. I made an absolute bare-bones-cant-do-anything-but-boot type OS way back "in the day" (like almost 30 years ago, ack!!!) just for my own education/fun, but the idea of having a dedicated OS that can basically only run DOOM, yet be ported to anything would just make the "can it run DOOM" meme so much more ironic and fun!

Nice stuff! Keep it up!!

1 day agoby the_hoffa

Hey unmapped (I am ThatOSDeveloper on GitHub and discord it's my display name) I never knew you got doom running on it, pretty cool, but I have a few questions, is it the original doom, is it on disk or an initramfs and do you use freedom or the shareware doom wad with the engine you use?

15 hours agoby OSDeveloper

Great work, I would love to have the skills to do something like this, but I can see you had to read lots of specifications to achieve this and thats my weakest point.

One silly question you may know: Imagine you wanted to use GPU acceleration, even in the smallest form. How hard would it be to build a driver for the GPU? Do you think there is good documentation about it?

1 day agoby tamat

Welcome to the club! Did almost the same and really enjoyed the serenity of doing something which never will end up in a product

https://jakobbr.eu/2024/08/19/writing-my-own-x86_64-operatin...

1 day agoby waschl

Really curious to learn more about TacOS. How does it manage running multiple programs safely at the same time?

19 hours agoby NoScopeNinja

Very cool project! How are you handling process isolation and scheduling in TacOS?

1 day agoby badmonster

> I have a Discord server for PotatOS where

what is potatOS in this context?

18 hours agoby throwawaymaths

Great project. Mmap implementation is a cheat :).

19 hours agoby NoOn3

Cool! Does OS kernel related to CPU model? Can I boot this kernel in KVM?

1 day agoby finalhacker

What did you do make the project interactive enough so you don’t end up copying existing implementations?

16 hours agoby sarkron

From-scratch kernel straight to DOOM is some top-tier hacker cred stuff. You must be very happy with it running on real hardware. Very cool.

1 day agoby andrewmcwatters

Really really love the name.

1 day agoby pkoird

Dude, I'm impressed cause I don't the energy to build my own OS kernel!

But here's a wacky idea. Just set it up so that the OS only runs DOOM as default. Boots directly into Qemu and runs DOOM, nothing to select or change. Maybe something you could fold other games into so that they can run off a USB boot loader. Might be appealing to people who don't want to install or compromise their base setup.

1 day agoby thewileyone

THIS IS AWESOME Love the project too!

1 day agoby kuberwastaken

Wow congrats, this is very impressive.

1 day agoby torcete

Why is running doom one of your milestones, given that doom will run fine on bare metal?

21 hours agoby justin66

what a classic - great job!

20 hours agoby snappyleads

Dude, getting Doom to run on your own kernel is epic - I gotta try building some wild stuff like this someday

1 day agoby gitroom

Nice work!!!

1 day agoby halfer53

A few months work by one guy and already more capable than the Hurd.

Imagine what you could accomplish given 35 years.

1 day agoby donnachangstein

This is so cool

1 day agoby KerbalNo15