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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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joshmarinacci ◴[08 Jan 25 20:22 UTC] No.42638061{3}[source]▶
It also documented far better than any other easily accessible hardware. I’d pick the Pi over any other real hardware target.
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1. vdupras ◴[08 Jan 25 20:50 UTC] No.42638305{4}[source]▶
I don't know where this idea that the RPi has good hardware documentation comes from. One glaring example is its DWC USB controller. Sure, it has a Linux driver that is open source, but its datasheet is not publicly available!

So if you want to develop your own driver for it, you have to second guess its documentation by reading at the driver's comments. This is bad.