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Operating System Mastery Roadmap(Beginner → Industry Ready)

Phase 0: Foundations of Computer Science

Phase 0

Build a solid foundation in computer architecture, algorithms, and low-level concepts.

📘 Core CS Concepts

  1. 1. Computer Architecture: CPU, ALU, registers, instruction cycle, caches, memory hierarchy
  2. 2. Number Systems & Binary: Binary, Hex, bitwise operations, signed/unsigned integers
  3. 3. Compilation Pipeline: Source → Preprocessing → Compilation → Linking → Loading
  4. 4. Algorithms & Data Structures: Arrays, linked lists, stacks, trees, heaps, scheduling queues

🧩 Practice Projects

  1. 1. ✅ Implement a simple virtual CPU simulator
  2. 2. ✅ Write a toy assembler that converts pseudo-assembly to bytecode
Phase 0
Phase 1
Phase 1: Programming Mastery (C, C++, Rust)

Phase 1

Master system programming languages essential for OS development.

💻 System Languages

  1. 1. C: Pointers, memory layout, stack vs heap, structs, headers, linking
  2. 2. C++: RAII, templates, std::thread, synchronization primitives
  3. 3. Rust: Ownership model, borrowing, lifetimes, safe concurrency

🧠 Key Concepts

  1. 1. Manual memory management (malloc, free, smart pointers)
  2. 2. Function call conventions, stack frames
  3. 3. Inline assembly and calling syscalls manually
  4. 4. File I/O, sockets, and signals

🧩 Projects

  1. 1. ✅ Write your own malloc() allocator
  2. 2. ✅ Implement a multi-threaded HTTP server in C
  3. 3. ✅ Build a tiny shell (command interpreter)
Phase 1
Phase 2
Phase 2: Operating System Fundamentals

Phase 2

Understand core OS concepts: processes, memory, file systems, and concurrency.

📚 Key OS Modules

  1. 1. Boot Process: BIOS/UEFI, bootloaders (GRUB), kernel loading
  2. 2. Processes: Process control block (PCB), context switching, fork/exec
  3. 3. Memory Management: Paging, segmentation, virtual memory, swapping
  4. 4. File Systems: Inodes, journaling, FAT32, ext4
  5. 5. Device Drivers: Interrupts, I/O ports, DMA, kernel modules
  6. 6. Concurrency: Mutexes, semaphores, condition variables, race conditions
  7. 7. Scheduling: FCFS, SJF, Round Robin, Priority
  8. 8. Networking Stack: TCP/IP layers, NIC drivers, socket interface

🧩 Projects

  1. 1. ✅ Build a toy OS kernel (with a bootloader)
  2. 2. ✅ Write your own scheduler simulation
  3. 3. ✅ Implement a filesystem in user-space (FUSE)
  4. 4. ✅ Create a process monitor (like top)
Phase 2
Phase 3
Phase 3: Dive Into Kernel Development

Phase 3

Deep dive into real kernel code and understand kernel internals.

🧱 Choose a Kernel

  1. 1. Linux (most popular for study & industry)
  2. 2. XV6 (MIT's teaching OS — simpler for learning)
  3. 3. Minix / Redox OS (for microkernel exploration)

🔍 Kernel Internals

  1. 1. System Calls: How syscall instruction transfers to kernel mode
  2. 2. Scheduler: CFS (Completely Fair Scheduler) in Linux
  3. 3. Virtual Memory: Page tables, TLB, mmap, demand paging
  4. 4. Device Drivers: char vs block drivers, kernel modules, sysfs
  5. 5. Filesystem: VFS layer, buffer cache, journaling
  6. 6. IPC: Pipes, signals, shared memory

🧩 Kernel-Level Projects

  1. 1. ✅ Write a Linux kernel module (hello_world.ko)
  2. 2. ✅ Modify a system call
  3. 3. ✅ Implement a custom scheduler policy
  4. 4. ✅ Create a virtual device driver
Phase 3
Phase 4
Phase 4: Advanced Topics (Modern Systems)

Phase 4

Explore virtualization, security, distributed systems, and high-performance computing.

🧠 Advanced Domains

  1. 1. Virtualization: QEMU, KVM, Hypervisors, container namespaces
  2. 2. OS Security: SELinux, capabilities, sandboxing
  3. 3. Distributed OS: Cloud VM scheduling, resource orchestration
  4. 4. High-Performance Computing: NUMA awareness, kernel bypass I/O
  5. 5. Networking: eBPF, DPDK, kernel networking stack

🧩 Projects

  1. 1. ✅ Build a mini hypervisor using QEMU + KVM
  2. 2. ✅ Write an eBPF network monitor
  3. 3. ✅ Contribute to Linux kernel mailing list patches
  4. 4. ✅ Implement a bare-metal OS for ARM board
Phase 4
Phase 5
Phase 5: Industry-Ready Skills

Phase 5

Acquire professional debugging, tooling, and portfolio-building skills.

🧠 Core Professional Skills

  1. 1. Debugging with gdb, strace, perf, ftrace
  2. 2. Kernel panic debugging and stack traces
  3. 3. Build systems: Make, CMake, Bazel
  4. 4. Version control & patch workflow (git format-patch, git bisect)
  5. 5. Writing clean kernel documentation

🧩 Career Project Portfolio

  1. 1. ✅ Custom OS kernel (boot to shell)
  2. 2. ✅ Linux kernel module
  3. 3. ✅ File system or scheduler simulation
  4. 4. ✅ Virtualization project (mini hypervisor)
  5. 5. ✅ Driver for virtual hardware device
Phase 5
Phase 6
Phase 6: Professional & Research Level

Phase 6

Engage with cutting-edge research and contribute to open source OS projects.

📈 Deep Topics

  1. 1. Kernel tracing and instrumentation
  2. 2. Memory model verification (RCU, lock-free correctness)
  3. 3. Hardware-software co-design
  4. 4. Compiler-OS optimization interfaces (LLVM passes)
  5. 5. OS for accelerators (GPU, FPGA)
  6. 6. Cloud-native kernels (unikernels, lightweight VMs)

🌍 Open Source Contributions

  1. 1. Submit patches to: Linux kernel, Redox, FreeBSD, or Zephyr
  2. 2. Join discussions on LKML (Linux Kernel Mailing List)
  3. 3. Participate in open source OS research projects on GitHub

📚 Additional Resources

  1. 1. Books: Operating System Concepts (Silberschatz), Modern Operating Systems (Tanenbaum)
  2. 2. Online: OSDev Wiki, Linux Kernel Documentation, MIT 6.828 course
  3. 3. Practice: Contribute to open source kernels, build your own OS from scratch
  4. 4. Communities: r/osdev, LKML, kernel newbies mailing list

🏆 Final Tips to Become Industry-Ready

Congratulations! You've completed the OS Mastery Roadmap and are ready to build production-ready full-stack applications.