Katela

Katela is a real, standalone kernel written from scratch in C and x86 Assembly. Development began on April 26, 2026.

Katela is not a hobby os, not a toy os, not even an operating system, and it is not built as a learning exercise that stops at "hello world". It is engineered as a genuine kernel project: its own core, its own shell, and its own filesystem, all built with the intention of being a real, usable kernel — not a proof of concept and not a weekend experiment.

Katela does not follow UNIX or POSIX conventions. It does not aim for POSIX compliance, UNIX-like semantics, or compatibility with existing UNIX tooling. Katela follows its own design philosophy, its own system call conventions, its own shell behavior, and its own way of doing things from the ground up.

Philosophy

Katela exists to explore what a kernel can look like when it isn't bound by UNIX/POSIX conventions or built purely as a hobby exercise. Every subsystem — from the shell to the filesystem to the drivers — is designed intentionally as part of a cohesive, independent kernel, not assembled as disconnected experiments.

AI

In principle, I allow the use of AI for development, but with some very important caveats

• You need to at least understand what the AI is writing; the point isn't for it to simply do everything for you, but to eliminate tedious work and automate whatever can be automated
• I do not allow the use of AI in very important areas
• If you wrote code using AI, you must state in your pull request that you used AI while writing the code and that you assume full responsibility
• I allow the use of AI in Markdown files, but please verify that the information in the file is accurate
• Check that the code (written by AI) works properly and that there are no bugs that could lead to security issues

Requirements

To build and run Katela you need a cross-platform toolchain consisting of an assembler (NASM), a GCC-based cross/multilib compiler, GRUB tools for producing a bootable ISO, xorriso for ISO creation, and QEMU for emulation/testing (you also can try another VMs like virtualbox or wmware).

Debian / Ubuntu

sudo apt install build-essential nasm grub-pc-bin xorriso qemu-system-x86 make gcc-multilib

Arch Linux

sudo pacman -S base-devel nasm grub xorriso qemu-full make gcc mtools

Note: on Arch, 32-bit multilib support requires enabling the multilib repository in /etc/pacman.conf first (uncomment the [multilib] section), then running sudo pacman -Syu.

macOS

Install Homebrew first, then:

brew install nasm xorriso qemu make
brew install x86_64-elf-gcc x86_64-elf-binutils

Note: macOS does not ship a native grub-pc-bin package. You'll need a cross-compiled GRUB toolchain (e.g. via brew install i686-elf-grub from a suitable tap, or by building GRUB from source) to produce a bootable ISO.

Windows

The recommended approach is to use WSL2 (Windows Subsystem for Linux) with a Debian or Ubuntu distribution, then follow the Debian/Ubuntu instructions above:

wsl --install -d Ubuntu

Once inside WSL:

sudo apt install build-essential nasm grub-pc-bin xorriso qemu-system-x86 make gcc-multilib

Alternatively, native Windows builds are possible via MSYS2, installing equivalent packages (nasm, mingw-w64-x86_64-toolchain, qemu, xorriso, and a GRUB toolchain), though WSL2 is the more reliable path.

Building

Build Katela:

make

Build and run Katela in QEMU:

make run

Clean all build artifacts:

make clean

License

Katela is licensed under the GNU General Public License v3.0. See the LICENSE file for the full license text.