UlixOS.org



Welcome to UlixOS.org!

Ulix (Literate Unix) is a Unix-like operating system that was developed at University of Erlangen-Nuremberg. We used Donald E. Knuth's concept of Literate Programming for the implementation and documentation. The intention was to create a fully working system which can be used in operating system courses to show students how OS concepts (such as paging and scheduling) can be implemented. Literate programs are very accessible because they can be read like a book; the order of presentation is not enforced by program logic or compiler restrictions, but instead is guided by the implementer's creative process.

Ulix was written in C and Assembler for the Intel x86 architecture; for literate programming we used Norman Ramsey's noweb tool.

Ulix has already been used five times in operating system courses at TH Nürnberg (Nuremberg Institute of Technology) and University of Erlangen-Nuremberg; lecture slides and videos in German language are online (see below).

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Ulix Development Blog

Ulix Source Code (released under the GPL, version 3)

-> Download at GitHub

-> Download at GitHub The Ulix Book (Hans-Georg Eßer and Felix Freiling: The Design and Implementation of the Ulix Operating System , 708 pages, September 2015)

, 708 pages, September 2015) Ulix-0.13-Debian.ova, development VM (OVA format, tested with VirtualBox, Debian-based, 1 GByte, expands to ca. 3 GByte)

Ulix-0.13-Debian-2019.ova, development VM (updated version)

Ulix-0.13-Debian-VMware.ova, alternative development VM (OVA format, made for VMware; otherwise same as above)

the full list of publications about Ulix (below)

lecture notes of Ulix-based courses (also below, bottom of page)

( Red links point to external resources.)

Releases / News

2019/10: The VM image for VirtualBox has been updated (so that apt still works in the old Debian 6.0.1), and there is a new VM image that should work well with VMware.

still works in the old Debian 6.0.1), and there is a new VM image that should work well with VMware. 2015/11: Thomas Cyron received a Förderpreis der DATEV eG award for his bachelor thesis in which he described the implementation of pipes for Ulix.

2015/09: rev. 0.13 (initial release, Ulix book, source available on GitHub)

Publications

Author, Title Language Early work (before the i386 port) [1] Felix C. Freiling: Betriebssysteme, Lecture slides of the operating systems course, University of Mannheim, 2008, archived version of the slides. German [2] Ralf Hund: The Ulix CPU, Seminar Paper, University of Mannheim, August 2008 English [3] Balthasar Biedermann: Entwicklung des ULIX-Compilers, Bachelor Thesis, University of Mannheim, September 2008, bachelorarbeit-2008-biedermann.pdf German [4] Sichol Thanormsuay: Entwurf und Implementierung einer graphischen Oberfläche für den Ulix-Emulator, Bachelor Thesis, University of Mannheim, December 2008, bachelorarbeit-2008-thanormsuay.pdf German [5] Romi Sorge: Entwurf und Implementierung einer MMU für den Ulix-Emulator, Bachelor Thesis, University of Mannheim, February 2009 German [6] Nadine Benedum: Entwicklung eines Assemblers im Rahmen des ULIX-Forschungsprojekts, Bachelor Thesis, University of Mannheim, June 2009 German Recent work (since the i386 port) [7] Frank Kohlmann: Implementierung eines ELF-Programm-Loaders für das ULIX-Betriebssystem, Bachelor Thesis, Ohm-Hochschule Nürnberg, February 2013, ulix-kohlmann-elfloader.pdf German [8] Liviu Beraru: Implementation eines Dateisystems und einer RAM-Disk für das Betriebssystem ULIX, Bachelor Thesis, Ohm-Hochschule Nürnberg, February 2013, ISBN: 3639626222, ulix-beraru-fs-ramdisk.pdf German [9] Hans-Georg Eßer: Hobby-Betriebssysteme unter Linux entwickeln, Presentation at the Linux-Infotag 2013, Linux User Group Augsburg (LUGA), March 2013, Slides, Video German [10] Markus Felsner: Implementation eines Schedulers für das Betriebssystem ULIX, Bachelor Thesis, FOM Hochschule für Ökonomie und Management, August 2013, ulix-felsner-scheduler.pdf German [11] Hans-Georg Eßer: LiPPGen: A presentation generator for literate-programming-based teaching, TUGboat, Volume 34 (2013), No. 2, pp. 190-195, TeX Users Group, August 2013, tb107esser.pdf English [12] Hans-Georg Eßer: Betriebssystem-Entwicklung mit Literate Programming, Course at TH Nürnberg, October 2013-January 2014, Lecture slides and videos German [13] Florian Knoll: Implementation eines Paging-Subsystems für das Lehrbetriebssystem Ulix mit Literate Programming, Bachelor Thesis, FOM Hochschule für Ökonomie und Management, May 2014, ulix-knoll-paging.pdf German [14] Cliff Dornig: Implementierung eines SLIP-Moduls für das Lehrbetriebssystem ULIX, Bachelor Thesis, FOM Hochschule für Ökonomie und Management, July 2014, ulix-dornig-slip.pdf German [15] Hans-Georg Eßer: Betriebssystem-Entwicklung mit Literate Programming, Course at TH Nürnberg, October 2014-January 2015, Lecture slides and videos German [16] Malte Kraus: Vulnerability analysis of the ULIX operating system, Seminar Paper, University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, February 2015, ulix-kraus-vulnerability.pdf English [17] Stefan Konopik: Implementation eines dynamischen Schedulers für das Lehrbetriebssystem Ulix, Bachelor Thesis, University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, March 2015 German [18] Thomas Cyron: Implementation of Pipes for the Ulix Operating System, Bachelor Thesis, TH Nürnberg, June 2015, ulix-cyron-pipes.pdf English [19] Hans-Georg Eßer: Design, Implementation and Evaluation of the ULIX Teaching Operating System, Dissertation, University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, September 2015, HansGeorgEsserDissertation.pdf English [20] Hans-Georg Eßer and Felix Freiling: The Design and Implementation of the ULIX Operating System, University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, September 2015, ulix-book-0.13.pdf English [21] Simon Brugger: Implementation eines FAT-Treibers für das Lehrbetriebssystem ULIX, Bachelor Thesis, FOM Hochschule, January 2016, ulix-brugger-fat.pdf German [22] Andreas Kurz: Entwicklung eines Overlay-Dateisystems für das Lehrbetriebssystem Ulix mit Literate Programming, Bachelor Thesis, TH Nürnberg, September 2016, ulix-kurz-overlayfs.pdf German

Ulix used in lectures

Friedrich Alexander Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, winter 2019/20

Friedrich Alexander Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, winter 2018/19

Friedrich Alexander Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, winter 2017/18

TH Nürnberg (Nuremberg Institute of Technology), winter 2015/16

TH Nürnberg (Nuremberg Institute of Technology), winter 2014/15

TH Nürnberg (Nuremberg Institute of Technology), winter 2013/14