Re: more kernel .01

[david.madore@ens.fr (David Madore)]

tristan in litteris <20010817204358.38BAB501D7@localhost.localdomain> 
scripsit:
> The reason i was hoping to run an old version of the kernel,
> .01 or .02(as someone proposed), is so i can use it as a basis
> for learning to add on to, compile, and change an os's kernel.
<snip>

Does it have to be Linux?  If not, there are several systems which are
supposed to be simpler than Linux and pedagogically interesting.  For
example, VSTa (see on <URL: http://www.vsta.org/ >).  It's GPL'ed.

Also, if you are interested in history, you might have a look at <URL:
http://www.sco.com/offers/ancient.html >: the Santa Cruz Organization
is offering free source licenses for versions 5, 6 and 7 of Unix
(circa 1970).  The entire v7 kernel source code, for example is below
20klines (mostly C, and a bit of PDP-11 assembler), including device
drivers.  You can even find PDP-11 emulators to run the thing and play
with it.  (But you can't redistribute it.)

(If you want something old *and* free-as-in-free-speech, there's ITS.
I don't think anyone was able to make it run on modern machines,
though.  Making a PDP-10 emulator is much harder than for a PDP-11.)

Happy hacking,

-- 
     David A. Madore
    (david.madore@ens.fr,
     http://www.eleves.ens.fr:8080/home/madore/ )