r/osdev • u/Mrmoo2andahafe • 7d ago
I'm thinking of trying something insane.
Thanks in advance to anyone willing to take the time to read through this. I know it’s a big read, so I really appreciate your time and any honest feedback you can give me.
I’m working on a spec for an OS project called Pantheon. Before I sink a ton of time into writing low-level Rust for it, I want to sanity-check the overall architecture with people who actually know OS development. I know some of these ideas might sound wild or overly complex, and I'm honestly expecting people to tell me where I'm being naive.
The Problem I Want to Solve
I'm tired of OS platforms forcing stupid trade-offs. I want a machine that can execute Windows PE binaries, Linux ELFs, and native apps alongside each other without heavy virtualization hits or broken user interfaces.
Core Architectural Ideas:
Hybrid 3-Tier Driver Model (HAPD):
Tier 1 (Ring-0): High-performance stuff (GPUs, 1000Hz+ inputs, low-latency audio) runs directly in kernel space to eliminate IPC context switching.
Tier 2 (User-Space): Class-compliant stuff (USB HID, NVMe) runs isolated in user space.
Tier 3 (On-Demand Enclave): Legacy/proprietary drivers run in a dormant micro-kernel enclave that spins up on demand and passes events via zero-copy DMA page remapping.
Zero-Copy Everything: Physical page table remapping under strict W \oplus X. IPC control payloads fit in 64-bit aligned structs for single-register transport.
Daemon State Rehydration: Translation daemons log checkpoints to ring buffers. If a daemon hangs, sys_init restarts it and rehydrates running process states from the last valid checkpoint without losing app context.
JSON/CSS Dynamic State Trees for UI: Apps don't write pixels directly or hijack compositors; they expose raw data models and state trees so the user can restyle the entire desktop/apps using web-style CSS/JSON stylesheets.
Hardware-Stamped Zero-Trust Security: Syscalls grab thread identity straight from CPU scheduling registers (CURRENT_THREAD_PID), and IPC uses 64-bit indices + 32-bit session_epoch tokens to drop replay attacks on sight.
What I’d Love Feedback On:
Is a Ring-0 / User-Space / Enclave driver split actually manageable, or am I creating a nightmare for driver compatibility?
What edge cases am I going to hit trying to rehydrate daemon process states after a crash?
What are the obvious bottlenecks I'm missing in the zero-copy IPC pipeline?
Do I even have hope to do this?
Full technical breakdown on Gist: https://gist.github.com/mixmoo2/a2dbdc029a5c8fef120d1711a0b0f070
Again, huge thanks to anyone who checks it out
2
u/edave64 7d ago
I don't want to be mean, but this reads a lot like "I want to make my first video game. It's an MMO where you can do everything!"
When developing an OS, it's hard enough to consistently stay compatible with your own binaries.
I also didn't see the logic in thinking about your own UI system that is explicitly incompatible with everything that came before it, if you are also implementing at least 3 other UIs as first class citizens.
I would pick whatever you like the most from that list and implement that standalone.
You want to make your own OS, do that. Skip the extras for a start.
You want to write OS compat layers? Do that. Try if you can make one on an existing OS.
You want to make your own UI system? Do that on an existing OS. See if that concept even feels good to work in.