3.7 KiB
ZenithOS
The Zenith Operating System is a modernized, professional fork of the 64-bit Temple Operating System.
ZenithOS strives to be simple, documented, and require as little of a knowledge gap as possible. One person should be able to comprehend the entire system in at least a semi-detailed way within a few days of study. Simplify, don't complicate; make accessible, don't obfuscate.
The CIA encourages code obfuscation. They make it more complicated than necessary.
—Terry A. Davis
Features in development include:
- Fully-functional AHCI support
VBE support32-bit color VBE graphics- A new GUI framework in 32-bit color
- Compiler optimizations for speed improvements
- SSE2+ instruction support in compiler and assembler
- Network card drivers and a networking stack
Changes include:
- 60 FPS
- VBE graphics with variable resolutions
- 440Hz 'A' tuning changed to 432Hz
- HolyC -> CosmiC
- System-wide renaming for clarity
- Removed shift-space mechanism
- Caps Lock is reassigned as Backspace
- Reformatted code for readability
- Added comments and documentation
Getting started
Prerequisites
- For running in a VM: Intel VT-x/AMD-V acceleration enabled in your BIOS settings. (Required to virtualize any 64-bit operating system properly.)
- Working knowledge of the C programming language.
Every commit contains a "Zenith-latest-YYYY-MM-DD-HH_MM_SS.iso" in the root of master, which is a timestamped ISO build of that commit.
This is basically a read-only repository. Everything happens inside the OS, as intended by Terry. After you've installed the latest release in a VM, you can make changes to the source. Once you've made your changes, you can make copies of the relevant files and put them into a folder, along with some kind of notes as to what you've done either as a DolDoc document or in the pull request later. You can then make a RedSea ISO file out of that folder by running RedSeaISO("MyChanges.ISO", "/Home/Folder");
. Export the contents of the VM hard drive in whatever OS-specific way you have to (there are scripts in the root of the repo), grab the ISO, and send it; a pull request attachment with the zipped ISO would work fine.
Background
In around November of 2019, VoidNV decided to continue Terry's work in a direction that would make it a viable operating system while still keeping the innovative and divine-intellect ideas and design strategies intact.
At first, development occurred exclusively inside a VM and ISOs were occasionally generated as official releases. This was not a good approach, as things broke and there was no way of telling which changes caused what, so it was scrapped and restarted from scratch.
Releases of the "old" Zenith are currently archived on the mega.nz
website:
The repository was removed in August of 2020, and is reuploaded here for preservation and future work. The latest archived front page, master.zip, and related links can be found on archive.org.
Screenshots
System Report, Z Splash and AutoComplete, with Stars wallpaper
32-bit color!