MAmajewsky·Sep 21, 2018
Working link: https://github.com/ReturnInfinity/Pure64
In How to create an OS from scratch – tutorialReturnInfinity
Pure64
Assembly2015–2018
ReturnInfinity / Pure64
Pure64
Pure64 is a kernel/software loader for x86-64 systems.
6Distinct people
6Mentions
1Explicit recommenders
600GitHub stars
What to know before exploring
What it is
Pure64 is a kernel/software loader for x86-64 systems.
GitHub
Where it is used
No documented product use has been verified yet.
What people are saying
If you are writing an OS, I highly recommend the Pure64 bootloader from Return Infinity. It's much more straightforward to use compared to GRUB which imposes a lot of…
Immortalin used a recommendation phrase. One indexed comment matches. This is a phrase match, not a verdict.
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Also in these discussions
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This week on Hacker News
Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 1:49:46 PM UTC.
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Mentions over time
HN mentions by year6 dated mentions
Observed mentions: 2015-09-08 06:38:17 UTC to 2018-09-21 22:23:32 UTC.
Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.
View mention counts and date ranges
| Period | Start (UTC) | End (exclusive, UTC) | Mentions | Submissions | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2015 | 2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 3 | 1 | 2 |
| 2016 | 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 2017 | 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2018 | 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 0 | 2 |
What Hacker News says
6 sourcesIf you are writing an OS, I highly recommend the Pure64 bootloader from Return Infinity. It's much more straightforward to use compared to GRUB which imposes a lot of conventions on how you structure things.
httpss://github.com/ReturnInfinity/Pure64
In How to create an OS from scratch – tutorialOur latest distributed database uses a mono kernel too. We use Pure64[0] to boot the system and then the "kernel" is derived from QK[1], but it's also just our database software.
Other than reducing complexity, our distributed database use the virtual memory hardware in a unique way, so a mono kernel was essential.
Having said that, the easiest way to develop such a system is not on the bare metal, it's by running Linux in such a way that in only uses the first 1 or 2 cores, and then running your "custom kernel" on any other cores in the system. Then you can use a normal debugger and utilities during development. It's only when you actually want to put it into production that you can consider not using Linux at all.
[0] https://github.com/ReturnInfinity/Pure64
[1] http://www.state-machine.com/qpcpp/struct.html#comp_qk
In Docker Acquires Unikernel Systems as It Looks Beyond ContainersPure64 – BareMetal OS kernel loader
35 points · Open discussionPure64 from Return Infinity sounds like something similar for 64-bit systems (sans C headers): https://github.com/ReturnInfinity/Pure64
In Show HN: Minimal freestanding C runtime for bare-metal/embedded PC projectsIndeed, a strange one to pick. I'd even say that if portability isn't a concern, working with x86_64 assembly is quite pleasant. If you avoid the lure of premature optimization, and stick with either function oriented, or at least procedure oriented programming, without too many long jumps -- I think you could get on quite fine in assembly.
The biggest issue, might be one that (sadly too) many low-level languages share: with the move to UTF-8 as the only sane choice for text, there are no string/char datatypes any more. No reason one can't use procedures/functions to deal with strings in assembly, but it would require a bit more planning than in a language that have "native" UTF-8 support.
[ed: I think Kollibri OS proves both points: it's a working OS, but they've yet to port from 32bit to 64bit even though they upstream they forked from
Read the rest
(Menuet OS) has a 64 bit version (that's not Free software/open source).
http://kolibrios.org/en/
Another "big" asm OS project is: https://github.com/ReturnInfinity/Pure64 ]