Can you make a new computer system?

Question

just curious. and well bill gates did it and of course i couldn't but what does it take? How do you make a new program for a computer to run on? (ex. mac, windows) How long does it take? Ive just always been interested and fascinated by computers so thanks yeah.

Answer 1

Actually, Bill Gates stole it.



Read it here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirates_of_Silicon_Valley



Watch it here:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=440334862070787846#

Answer 2

You have to learn how to program in assembly language and have a good understanding of logic circuits and digital electronics. It helps to know Boolean logic, binary and hexadecimal math, even though you may not be programming directly in machine language. How long it takes varies on your skill and how much you want it to do. Almost all commercial OSes are produced by hundreds of experienced professionals working in teams, for years . If you are interested, I would follow the Linux project and see how it has developed over the years. Designing and OS is a painstaking and tedious process. I've seen some homebrew OSes that hobbyist friends made. They aren't very useful, but for someone who is fascinated by computers, it's a good learning project. If you haven't done any programming before, BASIC is a good language to start with before you go attempting to write your own OS.

Answer 3

Bill gates bought his first operating system, i think for 60k.. Then he sold the usage rights to IBM but retained ownership of DOS.



In short - making a new operating system takes at least a few years for a team to accomplish.

But even 3 years is quite optimistic. High end video games can often sit for 5 years being developed. It's crazy but true.

Answer 4

Hello,

Bill Gates did not make a new computer!

He bought the rights to an existing program and rewrote the code along with Paul Allen.



Windows is developed by thousands of people working together on the millions of lines of code that make it work.



You may want to help with the development of Open Source software like Linux.

Answer 5

That's what people have done with Linux. There are many different "distrobutions" of LInux, all based on the original kernel. Frankly I have no idea how you'd go about creating a new kernel, but with some programming knowledge, anyone could create their own LInux or BSD distro (although it probably would be really sh*tty an unusable).



You can get information from a group called LInux From Scratch (LFS) that aims to help programmers develop their own distros. See http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/

Answer 6

Forget about making an OS, you'll need a lot of smarts (Bill Gates has an IQ of 170), time, and money. You'll also have to be extremely skilled with programming, so maybe take a course in Computer Science if you really want to, but to develop an OS on your own is going to be nearly impossible. You could just buy computer parts and put them together to make a custom PC. That'll take a few months and is easy.

Answer 7

Many people have written operating systems. There was CUTER, SOL-OS, CP/M, one that wasn't named for the then-new 16 bit 286 (made available by one of the columnists in Byte magazine), DOS ... and hundreds, or maybe thousands, of small operating systems written for small machines. Your microwave oven has an operating system, your car does, anything with a computer chip does.



Writing an operating system isn't that difficult - making 25 billion dollars from it is.

Answer 8

That's a pretty huge project to build an Operating System. You have to make sure your Operating System that you're creating supports all the hardware out there (Or at least do what Apple does and only sell your OS with your own hardware)... I really don't want to go on forever. But here's something interesting that I'll share with you as it's Google building a new OS with a new concept.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QRO3gKj3qw

Answer 9

You might want to look at linux an open source and free operating system supported by the likes of you and me and anyone with an interest in creating programmes.

You might want to play with this: http://www.howtoforge.com/the-perfect-desktop-debian-lenny

Answer 10

People do it all the time and they give it out for free! http://www.ubuntu.com/. You could modify it and re-distribute it if you want to.