Xv6 is a simple operating system (based on Version 6 Unix). It was created as a teaching aid and as such has a relatively small code base. It also comes with a book which explains how its key components work.
The small size and generous documentation (commentary book, lectures) makes it an excellent candidate for my homebrew computer. My goal is to understand the OS completely, so that I can adapt it for use on the computer.
- Applications -
Xv6 is intentionally lightweight. As such it comes with only a few user-space utilities (all command-line based):
- cat
- echo
- grep (minimal)
- kill (minimal)
- ln
- ls (minimal)
- mkdir
- rm
- sh (minimal)
- wc
This is great for teaching, but poor for usability. To make the OS more useful, I plan to grow the number of user-space utilities.