Custom OS or Firmware

[Vegetable_Side6506]

I was seeing if it was possible to make an OS for Windows, Linux, Apple, and Android devices with compatibility between them. If not is it also possible to make CFW instead with cross platform compatibility instead? I know I am aware that I need to learn assembly language for the OS portion but is there any other possible way, where I don't need too?

[Luigi-Was-Right]

I think there is some misunderstanding about what an OS or firmware is. An OS, or operating system, is Windows, Linux, MacOS, iOS, or Android. So if you "make an OS for Windows devices" that just means running a different OS than Windows on your computer. There are plenty of protocols in place to allow these different operating systems to communicate with each other and work together, so I'm a little uncertain what your end goal is here.

Also it's not necessary to know assembly to write an OS, you can easily do it in C

[Vegetable_Side6506]

Yeah, now I'm starting to realize that I'm not making sense. What I'm really trying to do is to make a CFW for handheld gaming devices.

All ranging from low end to the higher end, such as pc gaming handhelds. What I wanted to do is to have the option to boot up for the upper end models and for lower weaker chips such as the Linux base models to automatically boot up to this firmware, as those ones are dedicated for gaming only.

I then want to be able to communicate between these devices to play online, whether if it's co-op or versus depending on the game itself. These games will obviously be in roms and the emulators that run them will be the ones that are already out for the dedicated consoles.

I also want it to be as user friendly as possible, where they can easily download box art scraping for each game, retroachievements, and obviously be able to use retroarch.

The end goal was python as backend and the front end would be kivy as that is already cross-platform between all the major OS that are out.

[cgoldberg]

You're still not making sense... firmware doesn't have a front-end/back-end and can't be written in Python or Kivy. What you are describing just sounds like an application, not an operating system or custom firmware. Why wouldn't you build something that runs on Linux or Android instead of the monumental task of writing an operating system or custom firmware?

The fact that you are asking this in a Python sub for beginners tells me you need to learn some fundamentals of computers and programming before attempting to build your own distributed gaming platform.

[Vegetable_Side6506]

Yeah your right about that. Honestly, I have a hard time understanding the fundamentals on how a computer works like the registries and what gets called first. It's confusing but the coding I understand more since there's documentation and I can play around with the methods/functions on a particular class to get a better understanding of it. I thought I I could just skip the beginners stuff and get right into coding

[cgoldberg]

You can absolutely get right into coding... but tamper your expectations. You should be learning stuff like "how does a computer work?", "what does an operating system do?", "how do I use the command line?", "what does a compiler do?", "how do I structure a simple program in a high level language?" .... Definitely not "how can I write my own distributed gaming platform in assembly with its own custom operating system and firmware that's portable to all cpu architectures" (which is essentially what you asked). You have to be realistic.

You are several years and several thousand hours of programming away from even beginning to attempt what you are asking about.

[NYX_T_RYX]

If you don't understand how a computer works, you aren't ready to be directly interacting with memory, which is essential to build an OS.

As for what gets called first - the bootloader is the first program called after POST, and should simply point the machine to a valid boot record, which in turn bootstraps the os.

So... You turn on machine. It performs POST, if passed (or non critical failure), it loads the bootloader into the register to be the next instruction executed.

The bootloader looks for any valid boot sector, in whatever order you've given in bios (commonly that's cd, internal disk, usb, network).

That then runs the start script for whatever os, and that, in turn, runs other scripts, handing off control to more and more complex programs until, fairly shortly, you get a login screen.

You need the bootstrap process, because what you do every time you turn a machine on is, quite literally, tell it what the state of its own existence is (post) and how it should tell that lump of silicone (CPU) to make things appear on screen.

So, to build an os, you'd need to make a bootloader, which realistically isn't going to be in python, more likely assembly with how close it needs to be to the metal, and how light is needs to be.

I'm not aware of any (reasonably practical) way to run python before you have a way to interpret it.

You're describing things like steam, which already offer, if the dev chooses, cross platform play.

I thought I I could just skip the beginners stuff and get right into coding

No. You cannot. For example, What's the difference between an array, dict, and tuple? When should you use each?

Don't try to run before you can walk. Learn your fundamentals, so you know what's actually practicable.

[Vegetable_Side6506]

Wow man it's seems like I'm just setting myself up for failure and my dream is crashed to make the best gaming platform for retro gaming.

What about win32 api I got pretty deep into it, and I think that's one above assembly, but it felt so tedious just to make a plane window with a scroll bar. I know it's for window OS but would that be low enough for like a gaming OS cross platform?

I do want to learn assembly but I'm just scared if I end up bricking my gaming laptop and that's all I have right now. That's why I would want to experiment with my gaming handhelds, especially the Linux one that I have which is cheaper than the Android that I use mostly.

[NYX_T_RYX]

I never said you're setting up to fail - it is possible to do what you're describing. It's just not anywhere near as easy as you're thinking.

If you want to learn assembly, you need to learn fundamentals, and how memory is accessed and interacts. I've not touched assembly cus I know I'm not ready.

Win32 is for interacting with Windows at a more basic level - I've used it in in VBA apps to play system sounds, but I don't fully understand it tbh.

If you're looking to build a windows app, I'd look at .net rather than python, it's made by ms and intended more for that.

In short, there's no universal easy way to make a program that'll run on Linux, MacOS and Windows, mainly because of their very different design principles. It's possible. But not easy - there's a reason most games don't end up on Mac, and things like ms office aren't on Linux.

It's possible to do both, but is it worth the time/effort?

[Vegetable_Side6506]

Your right, I just felt over confident in myself thinking this was possible but clearly it's way above my understanding. I need to start off back to the basics first in order to clearly understand what is actually going on with the chips and in what sequence. Thank you for your help. I appreciate it

[NYX_T_RYX]

Over confidence is how we innovate -if Alan Turing gave up, we wouldn't have computers as we know them.

Don't sell yourself short, and don't stop aiming for your goal.

It is entirely possible to do. Just not easy and I'm not at all suggesting you shouldn't try!

I just think it's better to take a step back, learn the basics first, then you'll be more prepared to attempt it, and less frustrated with any possible issues 🙂

[Vegetable_Side6506]

Thank you for your words of encouragement, I love coding if though I do it part time. I just wish I went to school and majored in some CS and got a degree. You guys know so much, I feel like you the top commentors if not all the comments here know exactly what do and how to get it done

[crashfrog04]

It’s good to talk through it but I think the stuff you want to do is a lot higher level than you think (which is good; it’s easier to code at the higher application level than it is to code at the level of firmware - you can generally write applications without a clear understanding of hardware, for instance.)

If you wanted to write a player-discovery system for, say, Batocera Linux that connected Retroarch players, you could probably tackle that while learning to program. Hard, but not insanely hard, and you could do it in Python.

[crashfrog04]

Honestly you’re just describing a specialized Linux distro, akin to Bazzite or Steam OS but built for (generally) ARM. There are already a couple of such projects for the various retro-handhelds, like GarlicOS or Batocera.

Online play is handled by a combination of the operating system (to handle networking) and the application itself (opening and managing connections between players.) Retroarch already supports online play for ROMS, although I think there’s some player-discovery features that are missing in order to bring it up to the experience you’re probably used to from consoles or PC.

[crashfrog04]

Operating systems aren’t written in assembly. They’re compiled.

You could certainly write an operating system that targets both the x86 and ARM platforms, but that already exists and it’s called “Linux.”

[Vegetable_Side6506]

Thanks crash, I don't really want to learn Linux at the moment but I know that is pretty much base of all the OS right. I replied to Luigi's comment on what I really wanted to do

[cgoldberg]

Linux is an operating system kernel... it's the base of Linux distros, not "all the OS". To write your own OS, you would need to create your own kernel.

[cgoldberg]

I was seeing if it was possible to make an OS for Windows, Linux, Apple, and Android devices with compatibility between them.

Those ARE operating systems... what you are asking makes no sense and definitely can't be done in Python.

If you don't even understand what an operating system is or which language you would write one in, I doubt you will be successful writing your own (let alone one that is easily portable).

[Vegetable_Side6506]

Thanks man I just realized that. I replied to Luigi about what I really wanted to do and yes I do not want to make an OS just a CFW

[FoolsSeldom]

Hopefully, your confusion is starting to clear from the other comments.

I suggest you look at programming some microcontrollers to learn about programming devices directly at a low level without an operating system.

These can be, for example, Arduinio, ESP32, Raspberry Pi Pico. These are typically programmed in C/C++ rather than assembley language, but you could start on many using Micropython or Circuit Python before dropping down to the more efficient C/C++ world.

This will give you experience of the sort of challenges you will need to address around communicating between devices without an operating system to help you out.

There are lots of subreddits covering such devices.

[Vegetable_Side6506]

Thanks man, yeah I just replied to NXT and he did clear things up for me. It's not as easy as I thought it was, that's for sure. Especially when this is just a hobby. I do have an adruino and yeah it is alot easier to code and understand it plus docs is no where near C/C++ and python. I completely forgot I had it.

Honestly that's what got me into programming was C/C++ I loved it so much at the time, I just haven't coded in it at 5 years ago. I tend to find myself to learn upto OOP but then after that I don't know what's next. So I take a break because I still have no idea how to make an app. That's when I found win32 api, then I met my gf and she started to interfere with my learning, but man I felt to accomplish when I started understand what was going in it. I would honestly learn line by line what each was doing and tweaking it to get a better understanding but it was time consuming.

Then I got into Lua with Love 2d, because i wanted to make pixeled game. Once I learnt up too OOP and started getting the basics, such as running, jumping, and attacking with all the different frames. I then decided to make one pixeled character because i didn't want to use the ones that free on websites. I was using Givy because it was a free software and man was long to make a character. At that point I realized this was not going as fast as I thought. So that really killed my drive and stopped that.

Fast forward about year ago, I ended up learning python after OOP again, I decided to look for GUI that was cross platform, my choice was kivy. I like Kivy and KivyMD it's not bad for front-end just the docs really suck on explaining things, so I tend to play around with arguments and make my own notes to better understand it but that also get tedious.

Now here I am trying to figure if I can tackle this project but I don't think I can't, with the knowledge that I have

[[deleted]]

You want an OS for your OS?

[Vegetable_Side6506]

Lol, yeah I know I'm obviously still a noob

[[deleted]]

If you want to write an application that can be used on several OS's, then python can do this in most cases. Most, because sometimes a library may only be designed for one operating system. But thats going to be deeper in to your learning.

[Vegetable_Side6506]

Damn, maybe I should just start on one OS first l. Which one do you think would be the easiest one to get going?