NyxOS

NyxOS is a 64-bit operating system written from scratch in C and x86_64 assembly. Not a Linux distribution and not a fork: the kernel, the drivers, the network stack, the filesystem, the window compositor and the C compiler are all original code, with no external libraries.

Boot it in QEMU, or write the ISO to a USB stick and boot a machine you do not care about.

What is in it

• A preemptive multitasking kernel — long mode, 4-level paging, a higher-half mapping, ring-3 isolation with NX and SMEP, and SMP across real cores
• A windowed desktop: terminal, file manager, text editor, paint, image viewer, settings
• Selene, a web browser that fetches and renders real pages over TLS
• A TCP/IP stack written from the ARP layer up — DHCP, DNS, and a TCP state machine with retransmission
• An EXT2 filesystem with read and write support
• A C compiler that runs inside the OS and rebuilds itself — TinyCC compiles its own source, and the xbm package manager builds programs from a recipe
• Tetris, Snake, Pong, Minesweeper — and a DOOM port, which needs a WAD you already own; none is included

The downloads

• NyxOS.iso — the operating system itself.
• NyxOS Wallpaper Pack — 144 desktop backgrounds. The compositor paints the desktop from code with integer arithmetic only, because the kernel has no floating point anywhere; these were rendered by compiling that same painter against an ordinary framebuffer, so they are the exact pixels the OS puts on screen.

Pay what you want, including nothing

NyxOS is GPL-2.0 and stays free — funding buys speed, never access. The price box is here for people who want to help cover the nyxos.cc domain and the second-hand x86 machines it gets tested on.

If it fails to boot on your hardware, that report is worth more to me than the money. The last line that appeared before it stopped is the whole bug report.

nyxos.cc — source on GitHub — Discord