😝😝😝 RudzaniOS

Author: Ndaedzo Rudzani Brandon Mudau

RudzaniOS is a custom, minimal 32-bit protected-mode operating system built entirely from scratch. It features its own bootloader, kernel, memory management, virtual filesystem, and an interactive shell loaded with custom tools and arcade games.

✨ Features

• Custom Bootloader (16-bit to 32-bit protected mode translation via LBA)
• Interactive Shell with the following built-in commands:
  • help - Show the help message
  • clear - Clear the screen
  • about - Display OS information
  • uptime - Show ticks since boot
  • meminfo - Show memory usage and page allocation
  • malloc - Test heap allocation
  • ls - List files in the current directory
  • cd <dir> - Change directory
  • pwd - Print working directory
  • mkdir <d> - Create a new directory
  • touch <f> - Create an empty file
  • show_me <f> - Print file contents to the screen
  • echo - Echo text back (or print file if argument is a file)
  • cp <src> <dst> - Copy a file
  • cut <src> <dst> - Move (cut) a file
  • rm <f/d> - Remove a file or directory
  • nda <f> - A fully functional terminal text editor (nano-style)
  • sysmon - Dynamic system monitor (tracking CPU info and RAM usage, top-style)
  • calc <eq> - Mathematical calculator (supports sin, cos, tan, sqrt, log, ^, parentheses, PEMDAS)
  • ps - List active running processes
  • lets_play - Launch the RudzaniOS Arcade Machine
  • reboot - Reboot the system
  • halt - Halt the CPU safely
• Virtual File System (VFS) with an initial Ramdisk (initrd) and dynamic slot reuse for directories/files.
• RudzaniOS Arcade Machine (lets_play):
  • 🍎 Snake
  • 🏓 Pong (vs AI (Honestly ist just the computer BUT for 2026 markets sake we will call it an AI lol))
  • 🧱 Tetris

🛠️ Prerequisites

To build and run RudzaniOS, you need the following tools (the MSYS2/MinGW toolchain is recommended on Windows):

• gcc (MinGW 32-bit cross-compiler or similar)
• nasm (Assembler)
• ld, objcopy (Binutils)
• qemu-system-x86_64 (For emulation)

🏗️ Building and Running

The project includes a unified build.sh script to handle assembling the bootloader, compiling the C kernel, linking the PE binary, and generating the final disk image.

# Build the OS image (os.iso)
./build.sh

# Build the project and launch it instantly via QEMU
./build.sh run

# Clean all build artifacts
./build.sh clean

📦 Running in VirtualBox

If you want to run RudzaniOS on VirtualBox instead of QEMU, you need to convert the raw disk image (os.iso) into a VirtualBox Disk Image (.vdi).

If you have VirtualBox's tools in your system PATH, you can run:

VBoxManage convertfromraw build\os.iso build\os.vdi --format VDI

Alternatively, build.sh is configured to automatically attempt converting it via qemu-img when building.