Nox Kernel 🌌

A hobbyist x86_64 "bare-metal" operating system kernel built from scratch using the Limine Boot Protocol. Nox features a custom graphics rendering engine, standalone serial debugging facilities, synchronous keyboard driver logic, and cooperative thread scheduling.

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🚀 Features

• Bootloader: Powered by the Limine Boot Protocol (Revision 3) supporting standard x86_64 architectural setups.
• Graphics Framebuffer: Hand-rolled canvas architecture featuring a customized 8x16 VGA bitmap font engine with custom string parsing (kprintf).
• Interactive Demos: Includes a continuous breathing and bouncing DVD-style rainbow square that dynamically modulates size and canvas color channels.
• Drivers: * Serial Terminal (COM1): Automated terminal control sequences (ANSI \033 escape codes) featuring cross-interface echoing.
  • PS/2 Keyboard: State-safe scan code translator utilizing bitmasks to eliminate modifier inversion bugs from autorepeat loops.
• Scheduler: Cooperative multi-threading framework utilizing a non-blocking IRQ execution wait-state pipeline (sched_block / sched_unblock).

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🛠️ Project Structure

├── arch/            # Low-level CPU architectural mechanics
├── build/           # Compiled object targets and final outputs
├── drivers/         # Hardware subsystem handlers (serial.c, keyboard.c)
├── include/         # Unified system definitions and Limine specification headers
├── kernel/          # Direct kernel lifecycle mainlines (kmain.c)
├── lib/             # Custom runtime functions (printf.c, display.c, font.h)
└── sched/           # Thread context management interfaces

💻 Building and Running

Prerequisites

You need an environment with clang, make, xorriso, and qemu-system-x86_64 installed.

If you are building on macOS, ensure you have the appropriate cross-compilation target setups available via the command-line tools interface.

Download Limine

git clone https://github.com/limine-bootloader/limine.git --branch=v8.x-binary --depth=1
make -C limine

Compilation

To compile the entire codebase, generate the build artifacts, and construct the bootable ISO:

make

Running in QEMU

To boot your custom ISO directly inside QEMU with serial debugging piped right back into your host shell terminal emulator run:

make run

This runs the execution pipeline using the following command structures internally:

qemu-system-x86_64              \
    -cdrom build/nox.iso        \
    -m 256M                     \
    -serial stdio               \
    -vga std                    \
    -no-reboot                  \
    -no-shutdown

Other

Don't use Windows 8/10 Feature Don't use CSM Use FASTBOOT with PS/2 Feature

📜 License

This project is licensed under the MIT License see local source declarations for details.