HOS Alpha

What is HOS Alpha?

HOS is a minimalist, modular operating system engineered for maximum transparency, customizability, and developer control. Designed from the ground up in C, it serves as both a functional platform and an educational tool for understanding low-level systems, networking, and OS design.

🧠 About the Architecture

HOS Alpha is a lightweight, modular operating system built entirely in C, optimized for developers and learners who want deep insight into how an OS works at a low level. It is designed to be simple, hackable, and educational.

• 🔧 Modular Design: Clean separation of responsibilities between networking, cryptography, and system control, making development and debugging easy.


• 🌐 Networking Stack: Includes custom implementations of packet parsing, diagnostics (e.g., ping), and traffic monitoring tools like netwatch and netroot.


• 🔐 Cryptographic Core: Provides basic encryption and hashing utilities useful for secure communication and internal data verification.


• 🧰 Developer Tools: The system is built with clear, macro-driven configuration options and straightforward headers like HOS.h and main.h to simplify extension and usage.

Whether you’re experimenting with OS development, testing low-level networking code, or just want an open and modifiable playground, HOS Alpha offers a great starting point.

🔧 Features

• Basic kernel and interrupt handling
• Custom memory management
• Written in C with minimal dependencies

Releases

1. HOS Alpha v1.0:
   
   • First release of HOS!
   • Basic terminal / cli
   • Basic networking tools including netwatch and ping


2. HOS Alpha v1.0.1:
   
   • Upgraded NetWatch
   • Cleaner OS file organization & system directory tree


3. HOS Alpha v1.1:
   
   • GTK GUI Desktop
   • Buggy package manager (HPM, HOS Package manager, Not ready to use yet)


4. HOS Alpha v1.1.1:
   • NetWatch in GTK GUI
   • NetWatch CLI bug fixes
   • First version using Memory Pools


5. HOS Alpha v1.2:
   • HPM bug fix, custom packages finally supported, ready to use
   • DaveGamble's cJSON inside HOS download, now isn't a dependancy

📦 Source Code

Check out the full project on GitHub:

🛠️ Getting Started

To build and run HOS Alpha, follow these steps:

1. Download the OS (Section Above). Either Pre-compiled (Go to #5), or from source (Preferred method)
2. Install dependancies:

   1. Linux:

      Run:

      
      sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y && sudo apt install cmake make libssl-dev
                              

   
   

source run.sh
                

cd /path/to/HOS-Alpha
sudo ./HOS
                    

sudo ./HOS --gui
                    

sudo ./HOS -g
                    

📚 Goals

This OS is built for educational purposes, with the long-term goal of supporting multitasking, a basic file system, and eventually a simple shell.

💬 Contact Me

If you have any questions or suggestions, feel free to reach out: