Operating system development

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I want to develop some kind of operating system for myself one day, I don't know how insane that is but I want to eventually code all the tools myself and have complete control. I understand not a lot of people do this. I am able to learn a lot of things like assembly code and CPU features. Does anybody else have experience as a hobby developer? What is it like?

Linux is good place to start, modify a number of things, play, don't stop, play

Starting from scratch is possible, but it leaves open a lot of problems. Most importantly, if you don't have others involved as well, you are unlikely to get anything that is highly useful.

Putting your effort into an existing open source operating system would be much more useful. There is not only Linux, but there are also some like NetBSD, FreeBSD, and OpenBSD. One that I'm tempted to play with a bit is OpenVMS which was derived from the old VAX/VMS operating system.

It's definitely possible, you might want to check out Temple OS, it was done by a single developer. I haven't been paying enough attention to it to know how complete it was when the developer died.

But, in general, the simpler the OS is, the more manageable it is for a single person to code the whole thing. In practice, it's usually more reasonable to just take a different open source project and make a new distro or fork.

I'd say that being on the spectrum makes it more likely that you can do a lot as a single developer, based on my personal experience with large projects.

I've been gardening for over twenty years and now have hundreds of flowering shrubs in my yard!
I saw a big black bumblebee today as it was unseasonably warm in Connecticut.

The great thing about doing something as a hobby is that it doesn't have to be practical or "make sense."