r/Operatingsystems

Hi, my Windows license has expired. I don't want to pay, but I also don't want to download a virus.

What's the safest way to activate it for free? Are there any reliable websites or GitHub repositories you'd recommend?

Thanks in advance.

I used Windows 10 even though I didn't want to but got used to it, but I absolutely refuse to use Windows 11 if possible so I want a good alternative (I won't use Mac OS either by the way). Are my only options a Linux OS? I wouldn't mind it so much if I didn't have to set up absolutely everything myself unless there's no other option. I can only see something like Linux Mint unless there are other OS's I can use.

Do you remember the small vaporware piece of software known as Windows 1.0? It didn't look like much when it came out, but it has truly evolved now, and it has a new shiny GUI! Thus, it wants to become the true successor to MS-DOS! Will it make it? Or will its rival, OS/2, steal the spotlight?

Hello all, im currently a student taking an OS class where were tasked with creating a file system. I decided to choose FAT as my choice of free space tracking and management and wanted to verify my thinking if I really understand it due to not being able to find good enough resources. So the way I think of it is that a FAT is just a large array where FAT[i]=j and in memory this is how we keep track of our chain and which block to go to next to keep track of something in memory like a file. However since a FAT is just a large array it must be stored in memory(doing it in C). Is it true that the FAT table in memory can span many many blocks dependant on how many entries we can fit into one block.

tldr: Say we have 19,531 blocks, a block size is a standard 512 bytes, say we are using uint16 for each fat entry therefore our FAT would need 39,062 bytes. 39,062/512 is 77 blocks. Therefore block 2-77 must be set aside(reserved) for our FAT table, and inside all of those blocks lives our FAT array from fat[0] to fat[19,531]

Hey, I’ve started working on my own OS from scratch and I’m looking for advice + ideas.

Right now, I’m doing everything inside WSL (coding, building, and running it):

• Writing it in Assembly/C
• Building with NASM
• Running/testing it using QEMU (doing this all inside WSL)

What I need help with:

• What should I focus on first then next?
• Anyone who can help or give good tutorials/resources you’d recommend?
• Is WSL good for everything a good setup long term, or should I switch to something else?
• Any cool or unique features you think I should add?

I’m trying to make something kind of like an iPhone 1 and Android KitKat OS eventually, but I’m open to ideas.

Hope this message made sense and any help or suggestions would be awesome!

I hadn't used Windows for a long time; I was using Mint, then I decided to switch to Ubuntu. However, my USB drive kept giving errors and malfunctions. I looked online to see if it was possible to write an ISO file without a USB drive, and they all showed it through Windows. I searched for a way for Linux but couldn't find one. Can you help me?

I am college dropout, I have created some projects in different fields, and one arch based distro, which i felt wasnt enough so i dropped it.

Recently, I have been thinking about a new idea of os, Which uses ai as base of os, more like shifting from rigid driver and kernel based to ai based which uses drivers as cast to mold ai into slowly change them into dynamic code which in some period auto updates, that way even old system will work, also systems can be used as efficiently as possible.

I know it sounds far fetched or if available is out of my radar, but i feel its good direction on which we can work towards.

I wanna work on this but i lack guidance and skills necessary for this.

If you are interested by my idea, DM me.

(lenovo l14 gen1) im currently struggling because i bought a new laptop that already had ubuntu and when i tried to switch i couldnt do it because its hard and i have a usb stick (32gb)

edit: forgot to mention im using windows 10

So I've been using this computer for almost a decade and it's built up a tremendous amount of bloat from improper uninstallations. For instance, there is a ton of data just left behind from programs I don't use anymore.

I honestly could just reinstall windows but that would be a pain. I hope there's a tool already.

Modern systems using MLFQ what happens to interactive process(high I/O) in long run if it gets below CPU-bound process(es) in queue? Will user feel the freeze? I read that modern MLFQ follow fairness rule that every process will eventually get at the top and ones using allotment will go down, that means interactive process can get hidden below CPU-bound no?

In the book Operating Systems: Three Easy Pieces author says this:

>The kernel does so by setting up a trap table at boot time. When the machine boots up, it does so in privileged (kernel) mode, and thus is free to configure machine hardware as need be. One of the first things the OS thus does is to tell the hardware what code to run when certain exceptional events occur.

By hardware does author mean CPU? Because if it means keyboard or disk as hardware, for example does keyboard know what code to run when certain exceptional events occur?

I have a website at https://ospedia.site and I need some people to write for it. If you want to write for the wiki-style wesbsite, there is a CONTRIBUTING.md on the GitHub repository.

You might ask what OSPedia is. It's just a wiki-like website I started as a hobby about various operating systems. At the moment, there is only Windows, macOS and Ubuntu (incomplete).

I would like contributors willing to write for the website, especially the Ubuntu part. I have all the files created already and I just need to fill them.

If you do choose to write for me, thank you! You can submit even a short article with minimal information for me to expand on!

FYI: I am asking this for completely free, I am hoping for someone to care enough to dedicate some of their free time to this.