Hardware specific kernels

Zephyr is a real-time operating system and cross-platform embedded framework designed for resource-constrained hardware architectures. It provides an embedded kernel that manages memory, power consumption, and hardware peripherals across multiple microcontroller architectures. The project utilizes a hardware abstraction layer to decouple high-level kernel services from physical hardware through standardized driver interfaces. It employs a device tree hardware description format and a hierarchical configuration system to optimize binaries and feature sets for specific hardware constraints. Th

This project provides a customized Linux kernel and driver suite designed to enable hardware compatibility for Surface devices. It focuses on building and patching the Linux kernel to provide driver support for proprietary hardware components that are missing from the upstream source. The system includes a secure boot kernel signing mechanism and a process for enrolling custom keys into the system firmware. This allows the execution of patched kernels while maintaining system security protections. The project covers peripheral driver support for touchscreens, styluses, and keyboards, as well

This repository contains the complete source code for the OpenBSD operating system and its base utilities. It is a Unix-like operating system focused on a secure, portable, and multi-user environment, featuring a C-based system kernel that manages hardware resources and provides essential services. The project provides a source-based system construction model to compile the core kernel and base utilities from raw files. It includes a cross-compilation toolchain for generating the tools and headers necessary to build binaries for target architectures different from the host machine. The codeb

NuttX is a POSIX-compliant real-time operating system designed for microcontrollers ranging from 8-bit to 64-bit architectures. It provides a deterministic execution environment with a real-time task scheduler and a POSIX embedded kernel to ensure portable code execution across diverse hardware targets. The project distinguishes itself through a comprehensive hardware abstraction layer that provides standardized drivers for I2C, SPI, CAN, and USB across various semiconductor chipsets. It also features an embedded networking stack supporting TCP, UDP, IPv4, and IPv6, alongside industrial proto

The Linux kernel source tree is core system software tailored specifically for Rockchip processor architectures and embedded hardware boards. It manages hardware resources, processor execution contexts, memory allocation, and process scheduling for custom computing platforms. The project provides low-level hardware abstraction, initialization routines, and a collection of kernel modules designed to control integrated silicon components, storage, and networking hardware. The codebase incorporates hierarchical data structures to describe physical board layouts, memory maps, and peripheral conne

LiteOS is a lightweight real-time operating system kernel designed for constrained devices with limited memory and processing power. It provides a foundation for embedded IoT development, focusing on stable and predictable system resource management. The system implements a preemptive task scheduler and interrupt-driven resource management to ensure real-time responsiveness. It incorporates a tickless idle mechanism and optimized sleep-wake cycles to reduce power consumption in battery-powered hardware. The kernel includes capabilities for task synchronization via semaphores and static memor

XNU is a hybrid operating system kernel that combines a microkernel architecture with a monolithic layer for system services. It provides a foundation for operating system development, incorporating standardized system-call interfaces, a modular device driver framework, and mandatory access control security. The architecture features a Mach-based microkernel and a BSD-based monolithic layer. It utilizes a message-passing inter-process communication bus for secure data exchange between isolated kernel components and user-space processes, alongside an object-oriented driver framework that decou

The Linux kernel is a monolithic operating system core that manages hardware resources, memory, and process scheduling across diverse computing architectures. It provides a standardized, POSIX-compliant environment for application execution while maintaining a modular driver framework that allows for the dynamic loading and removal of hardware interfaces. The project is distinguished by its high-performance concurrency toolkit, which utilizes lockless synchronization primitives and read-copy-update mechanisms to manage shared data access in multi-core environments. It incorporates a comprehen

Asterinas is a memory-safe operating system kernel designed to prevent data races and memory corruption. It functions as a Linux-ABI compatible kernel, enabling the execution of existing Linux binaries and container workloads while providing a declarative operating system distribution model. The project distinguishes itself by acting as a virtual machine container host and a confidential computing guest OS, allowing it to run within hardware-isolated Trusted Execution Environments such as Intel TDX. It implements a minimal trusted computing base by isolating unsafe low-level operations and se

seL4 is a formally verified microkernel whose C implementation is backed by machine-checked mathematical proofs of correctness, confidentiality, integrity, and availability. It enforces strict isolation between processes through hardware-enforced address space separation and a capability-based access control system, where each process holds explicit rights only to the resources it has been granted. The kernel exposes hardware resources through a minimal API of system calls that manage threads, address spaces, and inter-process communication, with synchronous IPC supporting sender-identifying b

OpenWrt is a modular Linux distribution designed for resource-constrained networking hardware. It functions as a comprehensive network routing platform, providing a complete build environment that allows users to generate custom firmware images for a wide variety of embedded processor architectures. By utilizing a standardized cross-compilation toolchain and a package-based ecosystem, it enables the creation of tailored operating systems for specific hardware deployments. The project distinguishes itself through a hardware abstraction layer that normalizes interactions across diverse chipsets

ReactOS is an open-source operating system designed to be binary compatible with Windows applications and drivers. It consists of a low-level system kernel that manages hardware resources and a binary compatibility layer that enables the execution of software designed for the Windows binary interface. The project implements a cross-platform build system and toolchain for compiling and deploying bootable operating system images across different hardware architectures. This includes the use of cross-compilation toolchains and a hardware-abstraction layer to support various processor and motherb

Redox is a POSIX-compliant, microkernel-based operating system written entirely in Rust. By utilizing a memory-safe language for the kernel and all system components, the project eliminates common vulnerabilities such as buffer overflows and use-after-free errors. Its architecture relies on a minimal kernel that manages only essential hardware and process isolation, delegating all other system services to unprivileged user-space processes. The system distinguishes itself through a modular design where hardware drivers and system services run as independent user-space daemons, allowing them to

This project is a monolithic operating system kernel designed to serve as the foundational software layer for diverse computing architectures and embedded platforms. It manages core system services, including processor scheduling, memory allocation, and hardware resource distribution, to facilitate communication between user applications and physical hardware. The kernel utilizes a hardware abstraction layer and platform-specific device trees to ensure consistent operation across a wide variety of processors and specialized computing devices. It supports dynamic functionality through loadable

This repository contains the complete source code for a Unix-like operating system, including the monolithic kernel and base system utilities. It provides a BSD-derived system core and a full build toolchain required to compile a functional operating system for servers, desktops, or embedded devices. The system features a Linux binary compatibility layer that enables the execution and emulation of Linux binaries on a non-Linux platform. It also includes a modular kernel configuration process to tailor hardware support and system features during compilation. The project covers broad system ca

Unikraft is a modular library operating system and unikernel framework designed to compile applications into minimal, bootable virtual machine images. It serves as an OCI-compliant image builder and a cloud-native hypervisor target, enabling the creation of specialized runtimes that include only the specific drivers and libraries required by a single application. The system features a Linux compatibility layer that maps standard API calls and POSIX standards to unikernel libraries, allowing unmodified binaries to run without a full general-purpose kernel. It distinguishes itself by allowing c

MirageOS is a library operating system that constructs unikernels

This operating system microkernel is written in Rust, focusing on safety, modularity, and POSIX compatibility for modern hardware. It implements a microkernel architecture that separates hardware drivers and system services into isolated userspace processes for fault tolerance, while providing standard Unix-like system calls and process primitives on a memory-safe codebase. The system handles low-level hardware abstraction through a virtual memory management layer that maps virtual addresses to physical pages uniformly across disparate architectures, alongside hardware memory management opera

rpi4-osdev is a project for bare metal operating system development targeting the Raspberry Pi 4. It focuses on creating a custom operating system that runs directly on the hardware without an underlying kernel or abstraction layer. The project provides a codebase and instructional guide for developing a low-level system from scratch. This process involves transitioning from early boot code to kernel execution on the ARM64 architecture. The technical scope covers embedded system bootstrapping and low-level hardware interfacing. This includes managing memory-mapped I/O, physical address mappi

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 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

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

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 repository provides the Android device kernel and the corresponding Linux kernel source tree. It serves as the foundational codebase for managing the hardware architecture and power management of mobile devices. The project includes a comprehensive mobile hardware driver set designed to manage device-specific components, such as CPUs, GPUs, and cellular modems. The source code supports activities including Android kernel customization, custom ROM development, Linux kernel auditing, and mobile driver development.

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