OS Design and Implementation: Recap

The course MIT 6.1810: Operating System Engineering - Fall 2025

Let's say I'm at the end of the course, with a few papers still left to read:

• Blending Containers and Virtual Machines: a study of Firecracker and gVisor (2020): next task

• Read-Copy Update (RCU) Usage In the Linux Kernel: a scalable high-performance synchronization mechanism implemented in the Linux kernel (on locking)

• The BSD Packet Filter: A New Architecture for User-level Packet Capture: on eBPF

• Meltdown: Reading Kernel Memory from User Space

I'm wondering if it's the right time to read these papers. There are still many basic concepts in the Linux kernel I don't fully understand. Perhaps I'll return to them later. Now, let me share my thoughts about the courses.

Course structure

Structure

The MIT course focuses on operating system engineering, exploring how an operating system is constructed—from accessing hardware resources to running user-space applications. As part of the course, a small OS called xv6 is developed. It appears the course was initially created in 2010 or 2006 and has been updated annually.

xv6 is a Unix-like OS, and the course lectures and labs revolve around it. Therefore, we have:

• videos courses,

• book: the xv6 book

• Labs: coding exercises with tests to verify your solutions

We gain theoretical knowledge reinforced through labs (which are quite challenging 😅).

For each important aspect of the OS, there is a chapter to read and a video to watch. These resources are free, and there is also a lab to complete.

Duration

The course typically runs for 4 months, from September to December, during the fall of 2025. Here is the schedule: https://pdos.csail.mit.edu/6.1810/2025/schedule.html

I studied the course during nights and weekends from November to May 2016, which took me 7 months. Some lectures and tasks took me more than a week to study or complete, unlike the one-week-per-chapter schedule on their website. So yes, I'm tired, but I love it 😂 😭!

The advantage is that you can progress at your own pace, spending more time on specific topics to ensure you understand them before moving on.

However, after 4 or 5 months, you might start feeling bored and tired. Without classmates, challenging topics like Memory Management can become exhausting.

My feeling

I can't deny that I enjoy studying the course. While there are topics I didn't fully grasp (it's unlikely you'll understand everything with just this course), many concepts now seem less daunting. The labs have helped me develop mental models of how OS components are designed and implemented, similar to Linux.

I believe one of the course's main goals is to:

• Introduce students to topics like file systems, system calls, locks, etc, reducing their complexity.

• Make Operating Systems and Kernel development less intimidating.

• Lay the groundwork for research and deeper knowledge by reading papers on various topics.

• Practice writing C code, which is essential for Kernel developers.

Now, when I hear "System Call," I understand it's a function executed in the kernel, tagged with a number that user space code uses to perform actions.

I have blog posts on the course in this series: Operating System Eng

Next step

My timeline since 2023:

1. Computer Architecture (From Nand2Tetris)

2. OS Engineering (MIT 6.1810)

3. ??

For the third step, I'm planning to delve into the Linux Kernel. So my target for the next 7 months is Linux Kernel Teaching (yes another course). Here's a description of the course taken from their website

This is a collection of lectures and labs Linux kernel topics. The lectures focus on theoretical and Linux kernel exploration.

The labs focus on device drivers topics and they resemble "howto" style documentation. Each topic has two parts:

• a walk-through the topic which contains an overview, the main abstractions, simple examples and pointers to APIs

• a hands-on part which contains a few exercises that should be resolved by the student; to focus on the topic at hand, the student is presented with a starting coding skeleton and with in-depth tips on how to solve the exercises

The lectures and labs focus on the Linux Kernel (5.10.14). I'll spend a month evaluating it to decide whether to continue (I'm currently 99% sure I will).

By 2027, I aim for the Linux Kernel to feel less intimidating. It's a long-term goal, with many open-source projects in this area (like hypervisors and containers) where Kernel knowledge will be beneficial. The truth is, I'm not sure if I'll achieve this, but I enjoy studying systems, so let's hope I make it one day 🤣. You can read i'm just having fun by Jynn Nelson (a compiler expert) on having fun while writing code.

So let's take a breath and start this new step.

Links

1. (My blog - Series) Operating system Eng. - My learning path Operating System Eng

1. The course website: MIT 6.1810: Operating System Engineering - Fall 2025

2. My Github: https://github.com/tawaliou/MIT-6.1810Fall2025-xv6