Open-source alternatives to Rpi4 Osdev

This project is an educational resource for developing bare-metal operating systems and kernels from scratch on Raspberry Pi hardware. It provides a structured guide to systems programming using the Rust language, focusing on the implementation of core kernel components that execute directly on ARM-based hardware without the support of an underlying operating system or standard library. The tutorials emphasize a modular architecture that separates hardware-independent kernel logic from processor-specific and board-specific configurations. By utilizing a hardware abstraction layer and distinct

TinyGo is a specialized compiler and development toolkit designed to bring the Go programming language to resource-constrained microcontrollers and WebAssembly environments. It provides a bare-metal runtime environment that enables high-level code execution without the need for a traditional operating system, utilizing an LLVM-based backend to generate efficient machine instructions. The project distinguishes itself through aggressive optimization techniques tailored for small hardware, including a static memory allocation strategy and whole-program dead code elimination that significantly re

Mezzano is a self-hosted operating system written entirely in Common Lisp. It employs a language-integrated kernel architecture where both the kernel and user-space applications execute within a single, unified high-level language runtime. The system is designed for both bare-metal environments, booting from physical external media, and as a guest operating system within virtual machine software. It implements symmetric multiprocessing to distribute computational workloads across multiple CPU cores. The environment includes capabilities for automated memory recovery via generational garbage

WiringPi is a GPIO hardware control library and embedded hardware interface designed for managing General Purpose Input Output pins on single board computers. It provides a standardized software layer for interacting with hardware registers, facilitating low-latency pin manipulation. The project includes a GPIO command line interface that allows users to inspect pin states and manage hardware input and output levels directly from the terminal. It supports embedded hardware prototyping and hardware state monitoring, specifically targeting Raspberry Pi boards to interact with external electron

CppGuide is a curated collection of educational resources and practical guides focused on C++ server development, Linux kernel internals, concurrent programming, network protocols, and security exploitation. It provides structured learning paths for backend developers, covering everything from interview preparation to building high-performance network servers and understanding operating system fundamentals. The guide distinguishes itself by offering in-depth, hands-on tutorials that walk through real-world implementations, including building a Redis-like server from scratch, designing custom

m1n1 is a low-level bootloader for ARM64-based Apple Silicon hardware. It serves as a firmware tool and experimentation environment for loading external kernels and non-native operating systems. The project enables the execution of concatenated binary payloads containing kernels, device trees, and ramdisks. It provides a platform for firmware experimentation and the deployment of custom kernels on Apple Silicon chips. The system covers low-level hardware abstraction, including memory-mapped register access, device tree transmission, and stage-based bootloading. It also includes UART-based se

This project is a bare-metal operating system developed for ARM64 architecture. It serves as a low-level implementation of kernel engineering, focusing on the fundamental construction of an OS from the hardware level up. The system is distinguished by its comprehensive approach to ARM64 processor control, featuring a red-black tree task scheduler and a hierarchical page table system for virtual memory management. It implements a sophisticated privilege model that handles transitions between kernel and user modes, ensuring process isolation through address space splitting and exception level m

embedded-notes is a collection of technical study guides and development notes focused on embedded Linux, Linux kernel internals, and C programming. It serves as a reference for embedded systems development and a preparation resource for technical interviews in the field. The project provides detailed documentation on writing device drivers, managing virtual memory, and understanding kernel internals. It also includes guides on IoT network protocols, such as MQTT and TCP/IP, and outlines the architectural details of chip architectures and hardware peripherals. The material covers a broad sur

This project is an educational framework and toolkit designed for developing and testing operating system kernels. It provides a structured environment for implementing fundamental system primitives, including virtual memory management, preemptive process scheduling, and filesystem organization, using Rust and C. The framework is specifically oriented toward RISC-V and x86 architectures, serving as a laboratory for learning how to build core system software from the ground up. The project distinguishes itself by supporting both bare-metal deployment and hardware emulation, allowing developers

IREE is an MLIR-based compiler toolchain and runtime designed to translate machine learning models from various frameworks into optimized binaries for execution across diverse hardware targets. It provides a unified pipeline to ingest models from PyTorch, TensorFlow, JAX, and ONNX, lowering them into a common intermediate representation for deployment on CPUs, GPUs, and bare-metal embedded systems. The project distinguishes itself through a bytecode virtual machine and a hardware abstraction layer that decouple high-level model logic from specific hardware instruction sets. It supports sophis

This project is a freestanding kernel written in Rust that boots on x86 hardware without a standard library. It serves as a low-level system implementation focusing on the creation of a bare metal operating system. The system implements a bootable disk image toolchain that transforms source code into binaries compatible with a bootloader. It features a custom memory allocator for dynamic memory management and an x86 kernel implementation that includes paging, interrupt handling, and VGA text mode. The project covers several core capability areas, including low-level memory management through

This project is an educational resource and technical reference for building operating systems from scratch. It provides a comprehensive guide to mastering x86 architecture and implementing core kernel components by writing code that executes directly on hardware without the support of standard libraries or operating system abstractions. The materials focus on low-level systems engineering, teaching users how to interpret technical datasheets to manage hardware resources. It covers the fundamental mechanics of bare-metal programming, including the use of assembly language to define execution

This project is an educational curriculum designed to teach the fundamentals of operating system development and low-level systems programming. It provides a structured sequence of lessons and code samples that guide users through building a functional kernel and bootloader from scratch, enabling a practical understanding of how software interacts directly with computer hardware. The repository distinguishes itself by focusing on the core mechanics of bare-metal execution. It covers the implementation of essential system components, including assembly-based bootloaders that transition process

This project provides educational resources and technical guides for microcontroller firmware development. It focuses on writing low-level C code that runs directly on hardware without an underlying operating system, covering the fundamentals of hardware registers, memory mapping, and system clocks. The guides detail the creation of hardware abstraction layers to wrap raw memory-mapped registers into structured interfaces and provide walkthroughs for integrating TCP/IP stacks and HTTP servers into bare-metal environments. It also outlines the implementation of embedded systems build pipelines

This project is a collection of minimal operating systems, bootloaders, and hardware drivers used to demonstrate low-level x86 system programming and hardware interfacing. It serves as a kernel development toolkit and a system programming lab designed for testing architecture concepts and hardware behavior within a system emulator. The repository provides reference implementations for creating bootable disk images and loading kernel stages. It includes guides for implementing protected mode transitions, memory paging, interrupt descriptor tables, and symmetric multiprocessing on x86 hardware.

The RISC-V ISA Reference Manual is the official technical specification defining the RISC-V instruction set architecture. It serves as a hardware architecture standard and a comprehensive set of rules and definitions that govern the interaction between software and RISC-V hardware. The project is maintained as markdown-based technical documentation, which is converted into a searchable, web-based reference. This specification provides the necessary reference for processor hardware design, low-level firmware development, embedded systems programming, and compiler backend engineering. It inclu

U-Boot is an embedded bootloader that initializes hardware components and loads operating system kernels into memory. It functions as a hardware abstraction layer providing standardized access to networking, storage, and peripheral buses, while also serving as a secure boot loader and a firmware update interface. The project distinguishes itself through the implementation of secure boot sequences that verify cryptographic signatures and interface with TPM modules to establish hardware-rooted trust. It further provides specialized capabilities for updating device firmware via standardized prot

This project is a Lua-based firmware environment for the ESP8266 WiFi chip, providing an embedded Lua interpreter and a development framework for WiFi SoC hardware. It functions as a C-based wrapper around the Espressif non-OS SDK, enabling the execution of asynchronous scripts to manage wireless communication and hardware peripherals. The environment integrates a SPIFFS flash filesystem for storing persistent scripts and data directly on non-volatile memory. To optimize limited hardware resources, the system utilizes execute-in-place flash execution, running read-only constants and instructi

This project is a structured tracing framework for Rust that serves as an async-aware instrumentation library and telemetry data collector. It provides a structured logging facade and the tools necessary to record, filter, and route event-based diagnostic data from both standard applications and embedded systems. The framework distinguishes itself through a core implementation that supports bare-metal and no-standard-library environments without requiring a dynamic memory allocator. It specifically handles the complexities of asynchronous workflows by propagating diagnostic contexts across fu

This project is a collection of technical documentation and guides designed as a computer architecture explainer. It provides educational resources on how processors and operating systems execute programs, focusing on the fetch-execute cycle and the fundamental relationship between hardware and the kernel. The documentation covers a wide range of low-level system operations, including detailed guides on the executable and linkable binary format, virtual memory management, and kernel-level operations. It specifically explores the mechanics of CPU scheduling, preemptive multitasking, and the us

Goboy is a GameBoy emulator written in Go that allows original handheld game ROMs to run on modern computer hardware. It supports both monochromatic and color display modes. The project includes specialized tools for retro game debugging and graphics inspection. These capabilities allow for the analysis of game logic by stepping through opcodes, profiling processor execution in real time, and inspecting background palettes, sprite data, and map layouts. The emulator provides game state preservation by writing cartridge RAM to local files. It also implements pixel-buffer rasterization for ren

pwndbg is a GDB plugin and binary analysis framework designed for reverse engineering, exploit development, and low-level program analysis. It extends the core functionality of the debugger to provide advanced memory inspection and automation tools. The project distinguishes itself with specialized capabilities for heap analysis across glibc, jemalloc, and musl, as well as a comprehensive kernel debugging toolkit for inspecting Linux kernel tasks and slab allocators. It includes an integrated ROP gadget searcher for constructing exploit chains and an LLM-powered debugging assistant that provi

Kernel is an educational hobby operating system and low-level systems programming project written in Rust. Designed for students and hobbyists, the project provides a minimalist environment to explore computer architecture, CPU design, and kernel development directly on hardware without relying on a standard library or underlying operating system. The implementation features a freestanding language runtime and a custom target specification that replaces standard library components for bare-metal execution. It includes a multiboot bootloader interface to parse early-boot hardware handoff stat

This project is a C++ library and hardware driver designed to control Hub75 RGB LED panels using the GPIO pins of a Raspberry Pi. It functions as both a low-level panel controller and a graphics library for rendering visual content on low-resolution LED grids. The system distinguishes itself through a comprehensive set of hardware configuration tools, including custom pixel mapping, rotation, and mirroring to match physical display geometries. It supports multi-display chaining in both parallel and series configurations and provides a Python binding to expose the core C++ logic for hardware a

U-boot_mod is an enhanced system bootstrap program and customizable embedded device bootloader stored in non-volatile flash memory to initialize hardware, load firmware images, and serve as a network router recovery tool. It provides a browser-based rescue interface and web-based firmware recovery capabilities to repair corrupted device software and flash updates directly through a web browser without requiring a physical serial cable. The project incorporates dynamic flash chip probing and automatic storage detection to identify connected hardware registers at startup using standard paramete

NutsDB is an ACID-compliant, embedded transactional storage engine that functions as both a disk-backed key-value store and an in-memory data structure store. It provides atomic and serializable transactions with commit and rollback capabilities to ensure strict data consistency for applications requiring a lightweight persistence layer. The engine distinguishes itself by supporting a variety of complex data types, including lists, sets, and sorted sets, alongside standard byte-slice storage. It implements a transactional storage model featuring hot backups and a compaction algorithm to maint

PyBoy is a programmable Game Boy emulator and hardware simulation framework written in Python. It functions as an emulation engine that allows users to execute original handheld software while providing a programmatic interface to control, probe, and automate game execution. The project is specifically designed as a reinforcement learning environment, exposing emulator states and controls to facilitate the training of machine learning agents. It distinguishes itself by providing tools for game area mapping and the extraction of simplified 2D screen representations and collision maps to suppor