ANannilt·Jun 22, 2023Submission
Tutorial: Writing a bare metal operating system for Raspberry Pi 4
3 points · Open discussionsypstraw
rpi4-osdev
C2021–2023
sypstraw / rpi4-osdev
rpi4-osdev
Tutorial: Writing a "bare metal" operating system for Raspberry Pi 4
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8Mentions
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Tutorial: Writing a "bare metal" operating system for Raspberry Pi 4
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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, 3:56:07 PM UTC.
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HN mentions by month8 dated mentions
Observed mentions: 2021-10-06 15:05:34 UTC to 2023-06-22 09:43:02 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Oct 2021 | 2021-10-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2021-11-01 00:00:00 UTC | 6 | 1 | 5 |
| Nov 2021 | 2021-11-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2021-12-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Dec 2021 | 2021-12-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Jan 2022 | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-02-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| Feb 2022 | 2022-02-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-03-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Mar 2022 | 2022-03-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-04-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Apr 2022 | 2022-04-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-05-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| May 2022 | 2022-05-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-06-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Jun 2022 | 2022-06-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-07-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Jul 2022 | 2022-07-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-08-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Aug 2022 | 2022-08-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-09-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Sep 2022 | 2022-09-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-10-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Oct 2022 | 2022-10-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-11-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Nov 2022 | 2022-11-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-12-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Dec 2022 | 2022-12-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Jan 2023 | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2023-02-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Feb 2023 | 2023-02-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2023-03-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Mar 2023 | 2023-03-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2023-04-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Apr 2023 | 2023-04-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2023-05-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| May 2023 | 2023-05-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2023-06-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Jun 2023 | 2023-06-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2023-07-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 1 | 0 |
What Hacker News says
8 sourcesIMO the best way to get into this type of low-level tinkering is by writing a simple operating system.
https://github.com/isometimes/rpi4-osdev
There are other courses/projects for other boards. The keyword is usually “baremetal”.
For Linux drivers specifically there are training material from Bootlin etc. They definitely give you a kickstart—the kernel is so complex that most of the device driver knowledge is organizational and cannot be found on YouTube.
In Writing an open source GPU driver without the hardwareI forgot the RPi didn't use u-boot, but they use an equivalent.
https://github.com/isometimes/rpi4-osdev/tree/master/part2-b...
https://raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/questions/10489/how-do...
You don't handle the CPU from the reset vector like you would in a microcontroller or system firmware environment. There is an entire loader stack that finds a boot device to read a kernel image from that exists under you.
That's not to take away from this series at all, it's just the parent comment was asking about how it was so easy to get into a kernel image written in C on an SD card without any apparent SD card or FS logic.
In Writing a “bare metal” operating system for Raspberry Pi 4Quick thanks to the OP for linking my project: https://www.rpi4os.com & https://github.com/isometimes/rpi4-osdev. I'm humbled to be mentioned here. So great to read the feedback! Feel free to get in touch.
In Writing a “bare metal” operating system for Raspberry Pi 4Yeah, C is really easy to interface with assembly language.
The hard part is the linker-script to get this working right :-) https://github.com/isometimes/rpi4-osdev/blob/master/part1-b...
In Writing a “bare metal” operating system for Raspberry Pi 4Wow, is it really this [1] easy to run a C routine?
Where does the rpi4 store the firmware necessary to read from the sd card where this software is (presumably) stored?
[1] https://github.com/isometimes/rpi4-osdev/blob/master/part1-b...
In Writing a “bare metal” operating system for Raspberry Pi 4Of all the sections in the tutorial, https://github.com/isometimes/rpi4-osdev/tree/master/part10-... is probably the best one for anyone to read. I don't think a lot of people grasp that all the cores on a system start running immediately on power up and they're all running the same code from memory initially.
In Writing a “bare metal” operating system for Raspberry Pi 4Writing a “bare metal” operating system for Raspberry Pi 4
453 points · Open discussion