Hey everyone,

I’ve been diving deep into the early days of Linux and decided to implement a functional (albeit primitive) GUI on top of Linux 0.11. My main goal was to understand the interaction between kernel interrupts and framebuffer rendering in a vintage environment.

Technical Implementation:

VGA Driver: Developed a custom driver to handle 640x480 resolution (16-color mode) by writing directly to VGA registers.

Window Manager: Built a lightweight windowing system that supports basic movement and stacking logic.

Event Handling: Integrated PS/2 mouse support and keyboard interrupts. The GUI processes these events through a custom event loop integrated into the kernel.

Graphics Library: Implemented a primitive rendering engine for drawing pixels, lines, and rectangles directly to the frame buffer.

The Choice of 0.11:

I chose version 0.11 because its codebase is compact enough to be fully understood, yet it provides a "real" Unix-like environment. Managing memory and task switching while pushing pixels has been an incredible low-level engineering challenge.

Current Roadmap:

Optimization: Improving the redraw logic to eliminate flickering (implementing a back-buffer).

Applications: Porting a basic text editor to run within the window manager.

Kernel Stability: Refining interrupt handling for smoother mouse movement.

Note: This is an ongoing project focused on OS development and learning the fundamentals of early Linux architecture