I'd like to eventually create an operating system with a handheld gaming-device feel, similar to the PlayStation Portable, but I currently have zero knowledge in operating systems or low-level programming. I've heard people say that writing an OS is incredibly difficult, which is pretty discouraging. What smaller projects, programming concepts, courses, or hardware experiments should I start with before attempting a complete operating system?
4 Answers
A good starting resource is an operating-system development guide that walks through bootloaders, kernels, memory management, interrupts, and drivers. Follow it slowly in an emulator or virtual machine first, so mistakes don’t damage your everyday computer. Begin with a text-only kernel and add features one at a time.
Building a small educational OS is realistic, but building something as polished and reliable as a commercial handheld system is a much larger undertaking. A good path is to learn C or Python first, make several small programs, and study operating-system fundamentals through a structured computer science course. Use AI or tutorials to explain difficult ideas, but write the important parts yourself so you actually learn them.
If your main interest is handheld gaming rather than operating-system internals, consider making an emulator first. You can learn about CPU instructions, memory, graphics, input, and timing in a contained project, and seeing games run on something you built can be very motivating.
Start by learning how computers work at a low level: CPU instructions, memory, interrupts, boot processes, filesystems, and basic C programming. A first OS project doesn’t need to be anything like a commercial system—it could simply boot, print text, accept a few commands, and later read files. That’s difficult but completely achievable as a learning project.
For a first hardware project, try a cheap development board and make a tiny program that boots, blinks an LED, or displays text. Those steps teach you how software communicates directly with hardware without requiring a full OS.
Another practical option is to customize an existing Linux-based system instead of starting from zero. You could build a simple game-focused interface, launcher, or lightweight distribution, then study kernel and hardware development as a separate long-term goal.