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Bringing SerenityOS to real hardware, one driver at a time

(sdomi.pl)
309 points LorenDB | 1 comments | 08 Jan 25 16:54 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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Santosh83 ◴[08 Jan 25 18:46 UTC] No.42637177[source]▶
Read somewhere that it is relatively easy to adapt NetBSD's drivers into a custom kernel... maybe Serenity folks can go that way? Device drivers are huge obstacle for any fledgling OS.
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mysterydip ◴[08 Jan 25 19:18 UTC] No.42637487[source]▶
> Device drivers are a huge obstacle for any fledgling OS.

I've wondered if new/hobby OSes would fare better by starting out targeting a popular single board computer like a raspberry pi? A mostly fixed set of hardware to make/get drivers for and test your system on.

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yjftsjthsd-h ◴[08 Jan 25 19:23 UTC] No.42637523[source]▶
I've also argued in favor of that; I don't actually like Pis personally, but they're a super common, cheap enough, easy to acquire system and that's huge.
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FuriouslyAdrift ◴[08 Jan 25 20:15 UTC] No.42637995[source]▶
Raspberry Pi's are highly proprietary for hardware blobs...
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1. fngjdflmdflg ◴[08 Jan 25 20:42 UTC] No.42638235{3}[source]▶
I think the replies to this post may be missing the point? AIUI The raspi CPU drivers being closed makes it actually pretty hard to write an open driver for it. So you would need raspberry pi or their CPU supplier to write the driver for you, which they wouldn't do for a small OS. It took multiple years to support raspi 4 in mainline Linux and AFAIK raspi 5 still does not have a fully functioning mainline driver. That's why Raspberry Pi OS exists. You would pick a CPU that has open drivers because it would be easier to write your own for a different operating system.