A kernel that doesn't ask permission from UNIX.
Katela is a standalone kernel written from scratch in C and x86 Assembly. Its own core, its own shell, its own filesystem
Katela ok choice ok freedom ok your own pc katela> see sizes are shown in kilobytes katela>
Philosophy
Katela is not a hobby OS, not a toy OS, and not a learning exercise that stops at "hello world". It is built as a genuine kernel project, meant to be real and usable rather than a proof of concept.
Katela does not follow UNIX or POSIX. It has no goal of POSIX compliance, UNIX-like semantics or compatibility with existing UNIX tooling, and it uses its own system call conventions and its own shell behavior. The shell, the filesystem and the drivers are designed together as one cohesive system.
- Started
- April 26, 2026
- Written in
- C and x86 Assembly
- License
- GPL v3.0
What's inside
User mode
Programs run in ring 3, separated from the kernel.
A real filesystem
Early builds kept everything in memory with a limit of 16 files. Now storage is limited only by the size of your drive.
NVMe driver
Support for modern drives, added in release 1.5nvme.
Audio driver
Sound support, introduced in release 1.3.
Shell with scripts
A built-in shell with custom shell scripts and commands such as
help,seeandpanic.
Build it
You need NASM, a GCC-based cross or multilib compiler, GRUB tools, xorriso and QEMU. VirtualBox and VMware should also work.
Debian and 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
The README also covers Fedora, Alpine, Gentoo, openSUSE, macOS and Windows (WSL2 is the recommended route). More you can find in Katela's README.md.
makeBuild Katela.
make runBuild and run in QEMU.
make run-nvmeBuild and run in QEMU with the disk attached as an NVMe device.
make cleanRemove all build artifacts.