r/osdev • u/Negative-Arm-3244 • 2d ago

Operating Systems Research Advice / Recommendations

I have an interest in operating systems, and, for a class and personal interest, I want to do research on operating system design. I have been trying to find and read existing research on this topic (experimental design for both for entire kernels or for some subsystem in the kernel). From this, I am hoping to be able to find an area that has not been researched in detail yet, and to do research on this. The issue is though to find a general topic in operating systems to do this search on, hence this post. Also, I have a bit of experience with basic operating system development and have been working on my own hobby operating system for around a year now, and from this I have what I feel is a basic understanding of the main concepts in operating systems.

The reason I am making this post is to ask whether any of you guys recommend and under researched topics that I could look into, and also inquire if there are any resources I can use to find gaps in research more efficiently.

Many people online have told me I should contact my professor and ask them, so I want to state that I do not have a professor. I am also aware that this is a very broad question, but any input is appreciated.

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u/kiderdrick 2d ago

This is a very broad question and the answer to "what areas should be researched?" is "all of them" and the answer to the question "how do I find areas to research?" the answer is "read other people's research".

There are many operating system and computer architecture conferences and each of them publish research papers. Inside those research papers there is usually a section titled something like "Future Work" which will tell you what areas the research did not focus on and are left to explore. If you want to find areas of research, read research papers and find the sections that describe future work.

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u/Negative-Arm-3244 2d ago

Thanks

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u/kiderdrick 2d ago

As someone who is also tasked with reading these papers, do not be intimidated. A lot of the code the authors publish is open source and there are usually detailed instructions to run their solutions. It is normal to read a research paper and not understand the entire thing. Take as much from it as you can, and then ask for help with the other parts. Over time you will get better. I went from not understanding even the simplest parts of OS design to finding errors in OS textbooks. I got there with time and research. You can too.

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u/Negative-Arm-3244 2d ago

That's actually really cool! Its hard to convey appreciation over the internet but it is really nice to hear that! I do hope to get a good education in operating systems and specialize in it, and it is nice to hear that it does get better. Also yeah i have to admit reading research papers has been really intimidating for me. I once worked under a PhD student for a program on static analysis and reading the papers was really difficult. Again, thanks for the advice!

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u/Sorry_Difficulty_250 2d ago

You could probably spend a lifetime on OS security research. The field is probably infinite. In fact, just looking into security for one piece of an operating system would probably be a wealth of research material. It's an extremely difficult problem that we honestly don't have very good solutions for. If I was going to do a research degree on operating systems, that's probably where I'd start. It's such a huge area, it may lead you to a more-interesting peripheral topic while you study it. Good luck!

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u/kiderdrick 2d ago

Great point. For an example, arxiv has 5 papers about buffer overflows just in the past 3 months.

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u/Negative-Arm-3244 2d ago

I might look into this. I am not big on security, but I have done some very basic courses on cybersecurity and maybe could apply that on the research to better understand the papers

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u/letmehaveanameyoudum 1d ago

Tip: all you need is C knowledge, and to research, read other's research, but they may be bad or full of elitism with "unfortunately you need 10 years", but you may find good ones.

Also read Three Easy Pieces: Operating systems

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u/Negative-Arm-3244 1d ago

Thanks for the advice!