github.com/marvinborner/melvix ↗
:computer: Small operating system written from scratch (covid/school project)
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Contributors
3
Lines of Code
4,387
From
2019-06-26
To
2020-12-11
About marvinborner/melvix
Melvix is a lightweight operating system written entirely from scratch in C, created as a school project during the COVID pandemic. The project prioritizes minimalism and clean code, compiling with strict compiler flags and achieving a footprint under 100 kilobytes while maintaining boot times under one second.
The system implements core OS features including multitasking, virtual memory with paging, process sandboxing using ring 3 protection and SMAP/SMEP hardware features, and a basic graphical interface. It includes a virtual file system supporting EXT2, DEVFS, and PROCFS, along with a TCP/IP network stack and RTL8139 network driver. The codebase includes comprehensive undefined behavior sanitization and compiles cleanly with `-Wall -Wextra -Werror -pedantic-errors -std=c99 -Ofast`.
The project is no longer actively developed, though the creator notes that various features have been implemented across different branches and commits throughout its development history. While designed primarily as a coding playground and educational exercise rather than for practical use, the repository includes installation documentation, kernel and userspace overviews, and acknowledges inspiration from several other operating system projects and the OSDev community.