Before I can consider writing my own OS

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Hey I'm surprised some on this forum are into OS development. I dabbled on and off in intro programming for few years but I only get to complete the Hello World program.

My long term project is to make an operating system. I just need people to give me a plan of attack on what to do and learn before considering making one.

I also want to try Linux, but I never got a chance to dabble much.

I can't use a physical test for an Os either since I have a laptop.

A modern operating system kernel has millions of lines of code. Making a brand new OS that serves a purpose today isn't feasible.

No this doesnt have to be from scratch at all. My alternative if things don't work out can be to improve an existing one.

You can always make your own FreeBSD or Linux distro, but then again, most of the good distros have million dollar budgets, large teams, and are highly dependent on sponsor money and donations. Furthermore, Debian has half a billion lines of code, and Ubuntu and Mint have even more.

It doesn't need to be very modern either.

Sorry for these two posts in a row, but now somebody talks about BSD, and since I casually dived into Linux for a bit, I'm now curious too.

You might want to get involved with helping out with some of the Linux distros teams first. However, if you've only ever programmed "Hello world" I think you are being a little too ambitious at the moment.

BSD is similar to Linux on the surface, but below the hood, they're remarkably different. Whereas Linux is UNIX-compatible and is programmed to resemble UNIX, BSD is a port of UNIX. Linux is more user friendly, has better third party drivers, and is easier to work on. FreeBSD is more powerful, and better suited for specific tasks (the Playstation consoles, anything made by Apple, some of the root DNS servers, and the Netflix servers run an OS that is or is derived from BSD), but it's not a jack of all trades, like Linux.

To be more precise, the original impetus to develop Linux was to develop a free OS that was as close as possible to being UNIX without being UNIX.