bentobox

bentobox is a 64-bit SMP-enabled operating system targeting x86_64 and aarch64, on which I work on in my free time.

Features

• SMP capable preemptive modular kernel with full multi-architecture support
• POSIX compatibility
• IPC: Pipes, UNIX domain sockets, PTYs, signals
• Ports: Xorg, openbox, fvwm3, gcc, st, bash, coreutils, vim, fastfetch & more
• Filesystems: ext2, devfs, tmpfs, ustar, procfs
• Block devices: AHCI
• Interrupt controllers: APIC (x86_64), GICv2 (aarch64)
• ACPI table parsing & full ACPI mode using uACPI
• PCI(e) support
• Input devices: PS/2 (x86_64), Virtio, Wacom W8001 penabled touchscreen (x86_64)
• Elf64 modules & binaries, dynamic linking, CoW

Building the userspace

Packages required:

• build-essential
• git
• pkg-config

Start by running make jinx to download and patch jinx. Append ARCH=aarch64 if building for ARM64.

Then cd bootstrap/build-x86_64 (or build-aarch64 if targeting aarch64), and run jinx host-build '*' to build the toolchain. This will also build mlibc and its headers as gcc and libstdc++-v3 require them.

Now you can build the base system. Run jinx build base to build a minimal system (or jinx build '*' to build a full distro), followed by jinx install base base (or jinx install base '*' if building a full distro).

If you do not want to build a full distro but still get extra functionality like Xorg, simply jinx install base [package] (package names in bootstrap/recipes).

Finally, run make hdd -j$(nproc) to make a hard disk image (or make livecd -j$(nproc) if you prefer an initrd). Append ARCH=aarch64 if building for ARM64.

Building the kernel

x86_64

Packages required:

• build-essential
• git
• xorriso
• nasm
• qemu-system-x86

To build and run bentobox in QEMU run make run -j$(nproc). If your machine doesn't support KVM overwrite QEMUFLAGS: QEMUFLAGS="-display sdl.

Otherwise, run make -j$(nproc) to build the kernel and write bin/x86_64/image.iso to a USB drive and give it a try on real hardware!

aarch64

Packages required:

• build-essential
• git
• xorriso
• qemu-system-aarch64

Start by running . build/activate.sh to source the toolchain, then run make run -j$(nproc) ARCH=aarch64 to run the kernel and run it in QEMU.

Screenshots