Hey everyone 👋

I'm a beginner in kernel development and recently decided to seriously start learning how operating systems work under the hood.

I've done normal application/backend development before, but kernel development feels completely different. 😅

Right now I'm trying to understand things like:

CPU architecture and registers

Boot process

How the kernel actually gets loaded

Kernel entry

GDT / IDT

Interrupts

Paging and virtual memory

Physical memory management

Heap allocation

Scheduling

Processes and system calls

Drivers and filesystems

My long-term goal is to eventually build my own small kernel from scratch, rather than just following tutorials and copying code.

At the moment, pointers, memory, assembly, and low-level concepts are definitely making my brain work overtime 😂

I'm planning to learn slowly and understand why things work instead of just getting something to boot.

For people who have experience with OS/kernel development:

What would you recommend a beginner focus on first?

And what are some mistakes you wish you had avoided when you started learning kernel development?

Would love to hear your advice! 🚀

Sorry about my abscense, I've been on my vacation/holiday.

I've done a lot of learning the last few weeks. Here are the highlights

1. I'm completely redoing my memory management. I'm working on a Physical Memory Manager (PMM), AND a virtual memory manager (VMM). Completely redoing how I deal with paging. I came to realize that except for reserved and my video physical memory, I really don't care where it gets assigned. Also, again except for video and reserved physical memory, it can all be swapable.

My PMM keeps track of the following items: a) does the memory exist; b) is it available, for example I define my video memory as not available, it is allocated early on, and I don't want the PMM deallocating it; c) Is it allocated to a virtual address yet; d) in concert with c, is it sharable (multi-allocated); e) is it swappable, I don't want to swap video and reserved memory for example.

My VMM keeps track of the following: a) is it swapped out (future); b) is it read only, such as my kernel code and .rodata; c) is it kernel memory, not sure if I really need this, but I had spare bits, I might want to use this in my swapping algorithm; d) is it shared.

Much of what I had in my paging .c file, has moved to my PMM and VMM. I'm hoping to finish this this week.

Once I have those three areas done, I will redo my heap and then make my github code public.

I'd also like some advice, I have two things I'm thinking about doing next: 1) adding threading, I'm not actually sure what I'd do with it right now as I don't really have a block device to save swapped blocks to; 2) adding support for user space, this would allow me to put things like most of my video and my shell into user space, this would also justify doing threading next; or 3) adding support for SATA, this would justify threading (for swap), but I might want to put it in user space then it would be restartable.

As always your opinions are always welcome.

Hopefully this will be useful for the people searching after me.

Thanks for reading!

I am two types of kernel user; one is Android whose kernel is Linux and second is Windows whose kernel is Windows NT. I can feel the issues both of these have; both fight for stability when something cause system to get crashed and I feels BSOD and this is so annoying when you are working on something harder which needs system to be stable. This same came with me while training an AI model on my own system and Windows get crashed. So, I thought why not to try to build a kernel when never get this issue, but after some time while building I learnt nothing can be 100% stable but then I thought if this is not possible then why not to create a layer of problems which cause system to crash at system level. I had built this ARKM: Advanced Robotics Kernelling Machine, which is a custom built 12 core 64-bit Microkernel architecture with AMP which means Asymmetric Multiprocessing, ACPI which means Advanced Configuration and Power Interface into the core architecture of ARKM and due to this the stability of kernel became sky high. I had used the AMP architecture as follows:

• Core 0 (BSP) → Kernel shell, interrupts, global scheduler.
• Core 1 → Idle stability loop + diagnostics.
• Core 2 → GPU compositor for zero‑latency graphics.
• Core 3 → Isolated Ring 3 user‑space applications.

Its Benefits came as: Deterministic performance, no contention, guaranteed responsiveness (e.g., compositor never lags even if apps crash).

Now if I talk about how ACPI changed the architecture then it also follows the steps:

• Hardware Discovery → ARKM parses ACPI tables (RSDP, MADT) to locate the Local APIC and enumerate CPU cores.
• Power Management → Provides standardized methods for sleep states, CPU throttling, and device power control.
• Interrupt Routing → ACPI helps ARKM configure APICs and IOAPICs for multicore interrupt handling.
• Scalability → Makes ARKM capable of dynamically waking up Application Processors (APs) and bringing them into 64‑bit long mode.

Now if I talk about the 12 cores architecture it has then there is also a specialty behind it which is also as follows:

• Core 0 (BSP) → Kernel shell, interrupts, timers, global scheduler.
• Core 1 → Idle loop + diagnostics (keeps stability checks running).
• Core 2 → Dedicated compositor (graphics/UI rendering at zero latency).
• Core 3 → Ring 3 sandbox apps (user programs run isolated here).
• Remaining Cores (4–11) → Can be assigned to parallel workloads, background services, or specialized tasks (e.g., networking stack, storage drivers, AI routines).

I am still building it. I also have a screenshot which if possible then i will embed to this post as visual proof for ARKM.

My Aim is if I had bought a machine, then it must work according to me. I am also creating it under my future Company AROM so that I don't want to rely on any other kernel.

ARKM is just 2 to 10 KM behind the finish line. ARKM will now come with Full-fledge Kernel and with a Server Kernel with POSIX tech Linux have just for attract the user and developers of Linux on ARKM and we are developing our own also this Linux POSIX architecture will act as bridge between present world and future world.

Support me IF you want to dive into the future tech or want to explore it.

https://preview.redd.it/h1l07ojj6rjh1.png?width=1276&format=png&auto=webp&s=00e867e5160d740be56152c42d4e560c312404e3

Visuals Of ARKM

I graduated in 2011, so it’s been about 15 years since undergrad.
But if I actually count the years I professionally worked as a software engineer, it’s only around 8 years.
In between, I did a master’s, spent around four years trying to build a YouTube career, had gaps, changed directions, and worked on different R&D projects. Eventually, I reached Senior Software Engineer.
For probably the last 8 years, though, I’ve been almost obsessively interested in systems programming. I just keep studying it and going deeper. Even when I fail interviews, my reaction is basically to go back, figure out what I didn’t know, study it, build something around it, and try again.
For whatever reason, I haven’t gotten tired of it. I’m still sticking with systems programming and still want to see how far I can take it.
But sometimes I look at people who graduated around the same time as me and wonder where I stand.
A lot of people from the 2011 batch now have 14–15 years of continuous experience. Some are Staff Engineers, Principal Engineers, Architects, Engineering Managers, etc.
Meanwhile, 15 years have passed for me, but I only have around 8 years of actual professional software experience.
So I’m genuinely curious:

Am I slow compared to people in my age group?
I’m not really looking for the standard “everyone has their own journey” answer. I’m curious how experienced engineers actually see this.
Has anyone here lost several years to a master’s, trying a completely different career, starting a business, unemployment, career gaps, family stuff, or just making questionable career decisions?
Did those missing years actually hurt you long term?
Or once you become genuinely good at a technical specialization, does anyone even care that someone your age has 8 years of professional experience while another person has 15?
Especially interested in hearing from people who went deep into systems/low-level engineering later in their careers.