Pintos (operating system)

Pintos is a simple instructional operating system framework for the x86 instruction set architecture. It supports kernel threads, loading and running user programs, and a file system, each implemented in a deliberately simple way. Ben Pfaff created it at Stanford University in 2004 as a replacement for Nachos, the teaching system developed at UC Berkeley, and designed it along similar lines. Students implement significant parts of a real operating system, including thread and memory management and file system access, and they learn debugging skills along the way. Unlike Nachos, which runs as a user process on a host system and targets the MIPS architecture, Pintos can run on real x86 hardware, though it is often run on an emulator such as Bochs or QEMU, and its assignments are written in C. Several universities use it in their operating systems courses.