ChaOS is a single-user, single-thread 32-bit protected mode PC operating system. It runs on Intel platforms, minimum 80386/4Mb memory up to Pentium/4Gb memory. Since it runs without task and memory segmentation, all of the 4Gb 32-bit memory space is directly accessible to software.

Recompilation of the system requires rather more than the minimum platform, for example we rebuild the whole system on a 1.8GHz Pentium P4 in 35 seconds, using about 48Mb memory.

ChaOS is a different, some would say amateur approach to operating system design. All academic texts on operating system design seem to revolve around a protected kernel which provides protected operating space for multiple tasks. All the main commercial and free source operating systems follow this approach, as it is the one taught in universities around the world.

The reasons for task separation and fault protection in an operating system are obvious, guarding against the possibility that errors in one software program might cause a whole system to go awry.(CRASH!)

Still, despite this general model, computers crash regularly. (Note: this assertion was made in year 2001. Now in year 2008 operating systems are a lot more reliable, so PC's don't crash so often). The larger the system, the more serious will be the consequences.

i.e "Crash=Cash".

If a computer (or system) crashes, it is almost always because some programmer, somewhere, sometime made a mistake in his programming. (Of course, it could be because the processor just died but that is much rarer.) Such mistakes (let's call them bugs) may take years to emerge, like the old millennium bug, and arise commonly as older software encounters conditions which weren't envisaged when it was written. Nobody can be expected to predict all future operating conditions, so bugs are a fact of life.

Modern processors have hardware support for protected kernel design, which shield the operating system from serious errors in user programs. But equally this protection prevents users from examining the inner workings of the operating system running on their PC, so most users will never, in a lifetime, have the opportunity of contributing to improvements to the systems they use each day.

Software runs smoothly when operating within the parameters envisaged by the original programmers. But systems change constantly, and previously reliable software may contain hidden flaws. These latent flaws can only be corrected by modifying the original code. To do this, the source code for the system is needed, along with an editor (to modify the source code) and compilers (programs which make programs) to rebuild the system after corrections have been made.

So now open-source software is making headway, as programmers worldwide recognise the future benefit of user-driven modification to software. But ChaOS goes further:

The ChaOS Wish-List!

1-An operating system which can be completely understood by one person.

2-One common source-embedded format for all executable program files. (including the operating system itself).

  3-Ability to modify fundamental operating system components, and eliminate obsolete ideas.

4-Load-on-demand device drivers.

5-Common, fully recursive data type system, resulting in type-safe dynamic linking to operating system functions, called by simple near calls in 32-bit flat memory.

6-Same compiler and linker to produce the bootstrap code, operating system, device drivers, and applications.

7-The ability to alter programs whilst they are running. (edit system code, recompile, swap new/old code blocks whilst momentarily halting the whole operating system.

That wish list came a step closer in 2003 when, for the first time, ChaOS recreated itself from 78 files, single-passed through the ChaOS compiler CC, linked and written to disk by the linker CL, and rebooted by a BIOS shutdown(10).

Right now, only the (7) on the wish list remains to be implemented, with all the ingredients to make it happen. ChaOS is ready for the world - but is the world ready for ChaOS?

PostScript: 4th August 2008

Been busy doing a Commercial Pilot's Licence, but the ChaOS project is still ongoing. A couple more additions to the wish-list:

8-HTML source files  (Done, October 2008)

9-Internet Protocol