Dev tools · alternatives · 2026

24 alternatives to I made a set of tools to write kernel prototypes.

This is a personal project I've been working on and off for the past few years. It's a set of tools that have allowed me to prototype quickly small (and increasingly bigger) kernels, and create userspace programs to interact with them. Supports riscv64, amd64 and i386. The intel port has been tested and used on real hardware, from big dual-socket Xeon machines to an old X220. It is all C, I have plan to make rust bindings for the kernel library. But again, they're plans at this stage. Porting to new architectures is relatively simple, a basic port to riscv took me a couple of weeks of…

Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes. I made a set of tools to write kernel prototypes. launched in 2024; newer entries below may have overtaken it.

1
My from-scratch OS kernel that runs DOOM▲320
Hi there! I've been on-and-off working on TacOS for a few months, which follows some UNIX-derived concepts (exec/fork, unix-style VFS, etc) and is now able to run a port of Doom, with a fairly small amount of modifications, using my from-scratch libc. The performance is actually decent compared to what I expected. Very interested to hear your thoughts. Thank you!
2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
2
My microkernel-based OS built from scratch now has basic Unix commands▲69
This project contains no code from Linux, BSD, Minix, or any other OS. Everything up until this point is written entirely from scratch, including a pure microkernel (that only implements multiprocessor priority scheduling, memory management, and interprocess communication), a work-in-progress implementation of the standard C library, and a variety of servers that provide drivers and other essential OS functionality. At the time of writing this post, the servers provide drivers for the keyboard, NVMe SSDs (that works on real hardware), a Unix-like virtual file system (with a single root…
2024 · github.com · its alternatives →
3
Anos – a hand-written ~100KiB microkernel for x86-64 and RISC-V▲115
I pretty much always have a kernel project going on, and have been that way for decades. Over the past couple of years, that's been Anos, which has gotten further along than any of my previous hobby kernels, supporting IPC, multitasking, SMP (x86-64 only right now) and running on real hardware. LLMs (mostly Claude Code) have been used during development, but I learned early on that it's not _great_ at code at this level, so I've restricted its use to mostly documentation and tests. There's _a little_ AI code in the user space, but I have a strict "no AI code" rule in the kernel itself. I…
Apr 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →
4
My self-written hobby OS is finally running on my vintage IBM ThinkPad▲575
Finally got my hobby OS up and running on real hardware. I love the old IBM thinkpads, so thought it was the perfect machine to get it working on. Been working on it for quite some time now, but this has been a big milestone!
2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
5
I integrated my from-scratch TCP/IP stack into the xv6-riscv OS▲147
Hi HN, To truly understand how operating systems and network protocols work, I decided to combine two classic learning tools: the xv6 teaching OS and a from-scratch TCP/IP stack. I'm excited to share the result: my own from-scratch TCP/IP networking stack running directly inside the xv6-riscv (https://github.com/pandax381/xv6-riscv-net) kernel. The project uses a modern virtio-net driver, allowing it to run seamlessly in QEMU and communicate with the host machine. Key features: - From-Scratch Stack: The core is powered by microps…
2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
6IB
I built an open-source kernel for Texas Instruments calculators▲20
You know that old TI calculator you used in high school, then put in a box and forgot about? Have you ever wished you had an operating system for your calculator with preemptive multitasking, dynamic memory management, a tree filesystem conforming to the FHS, and all the comforts of Unix? Well, good news: that's totally a thing that exists. I've been working on my kernel for about three and a half years now and I'm looking for new contributors to help out. It's written entirely in z80 assembly, and it's both challenging and fun to work on. There's an IRC channel for contributors or people…
2014 · its alternatives →
7
A new hobby OS from “scratch” in C#▲310
A multitasking monolithic Kernel based x86 targeting Operating System written in C# from scratch aiming for high-level implementation of drivers in managed environment. - amaneureka/AtomOS
2017 · github.com · its alternatives →
8
A small virtual machine written in C▲212
"interesting" VM in C. Let's see how this goes. Contribute to tekknolagi/carp development by creating an account on GitHub.
2014 · github.com · its alternatives →
9
A DOS-like hobby OS written in Rust and x86 assembly▲207
To try it out, simply build the project yourself from source, or use attached bootable ISO image of the system (in Releases on Github) and run it in QEMU. https://blog.vxn.dev/rou2exos-rusted-edition
2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
10
RISC-V core written in 600 lines of C89▲190
32-bit RISC-V CPU in ~800 lines of C89. Contribute to mnurzia/rv development by creating an account on GitHub.
2023 · github.com · its alternatives →
11RA
Rust, ARM Cortex M, and a Generated HAL▲137
2016 · jamesmunns.com · its alternatives →
12
Kern – container and resource runtime in a 1.5 MB binary, no daemon▲70
A fast, rootless sandbox and virtual resource runtime for any workload, including untrusted and AI-generated code. Daemonless: a real, kernel-enforced container in ~3.5 ms from an OCI image, out of one static binary - getkern/kern
Aug 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →
13
A simple way to write standalone C programs for i386▲147
A simple way to write standalone C programs for i386 - luke8086/boot2c
2019 · github.com · its alternatives →
14
cuTile Rust: Safe, data-race-free GPU kernels in Rust▲106
cuTile Rust provides a safe, tile-based kernel programming DSL for the Rust programming language. It features a safe host-side API for passing tensors to asynchronously executed kernel functions. - NVlabs/cutile-rs
Jun 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →
15
SpecOS – A 64 bit OS kernel from scratch▲45
I've been working on this for ~3 months now, with pretty slow progress to be honest. So far I've got an ATA PIO mode hard disk driver, a FAT32 file system, a real time clock driver, and of course the essentials (interrupts, keyboard, pixel graphics). Kernel panics also cause a blue screen of death xD. It uses a bitmap physical memory allocator, and I'm fixing some issues with paging at the moment as a work towards running userspace applications. I'd be interested to see your thoughts on it :D
2024 · github.com · its alternatives →
16
A 10KiB kernel for cloud apps▲68
BareMetal for the private/public cloud. Contribute to ReturnInfinity/BareMetal-Cloud development by creating an account on GitHub.
Jan 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →
17
A pipelined RISC-V processor written in VHDL▲65
A pipelined RISCV implementation in VHDL. Contribute to inforichland/freezing-spice development by creating an account on GitHub.
2015 · github.com · its alternatives →
18
A (marginally) useful x86-64 ELF executable in 466 bytes▲85
Battery info program for x86-64 Linux laptops in 307 bytes of machine code - meribold/btry
2024 · github.com · its alternatives →
19
I built a RISC-V emulator that runs DOOM▲50
Demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5uygzEmdLw Hi HN, I built a RISC-V emulator that implements the RV32IM instruction set and a minimal syscall interface to run DOOM. A few weeks ago, I got my first output with a simple hello world assembly program. Since then I have been working tirelessly to get DOOM to run. I needed to figure out how to run C programs first, and came across newlib, which allows the underlying environment to implement the syscall stubs one by one until the programs run. I have also added ELF loading, but currently only a single `PT_LOAD` segment is…
May 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →
20WR
Writing Rust modules for the xv6 kernel▲5
After my last blogpost showing how to compile and link Rust code for the x86 xv6 kernel (using C FFI), in this post I show how to code your own networking stack, and then show a working http server using smoltcp.
Dec 2025 · alessandroferrari.live · its alternatives →
21
Less Slow C++▲6
Earlier this year, I took a month to reexamine my coding habits and rethink some past design choices. I hope to rewrite and improve my FOSS libraries this year, and I needed answers to a few questions first. Perhaps some of these questions will resonate with others in the community, too. - Are coroutines viable for high-performance work? - Should I use SIMD intrinsics for clarity or drop to assembly for easier library distribution? - Has hardware caught up with vectorized scatter/gather in AVX-512 & SVE? - How do secure enclaves & pointer tagging differ on Intel, Arm, & AMD? - What's…
2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
22
I run 30B 22tok/s, 109tok/s not novel,6GB/16GB RAM overcoming llama.cpp▲5
Democratisation of local AI is key. I've been working on pushing the limits of commercial hardware, squeezing any extra bit possible. My Scientific Agentic AI hareness helped me to reallocate every single bit of it. I rewrote the Kernel, I went down the CUDA rabbit hole until I have been able to explain any bit and any ms of computational power involved in the process pushing the Qwen 30B-A3B from 8 tok7s to 19 tok/s with llama.cpp up to 22.2 tok/s with my project and 109 tok/s on not novel content and speeding up the prefill by 5-9X
Jul 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →
23
I wrote a from-scratch OS to serve my blog▲13
Hey HN! This is a fun/educational project I built to learn OS programming. I started working on it right after graduating high school last year and have been working on it on and off during my first year of university. It features a TCP/IP stack, an HTTP server, a RAM file system, a BIOS bootloader, paging and memory management, and concurrent tasks based on cooperative scheduling, along with a custom library. It's written in a C programming style focused on safety (based on a custom library of core abstractions) that's inspired by the writing of Chris Wellons (nullprogram.com).…
2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
24
Write, simulate and synthesize VHDL/Verilog in the browser▲19
Learn digital hardware design in the browser: write VHDL and SystemVerilog, simulate, read waveforms, and synthesize to a netlist. No installation required.
Jul 2026 · risingedge.pro · its alternatives →

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