[convolvatron]

i dont disagree with you, but there are alot more basic resources available now then when I learned kernel programming in the early 90s.

also, being able to develop under qemu is a massive* timesaver. not only can you reboot completely from the terminal, and have access to a gdb stub, but you can also get tracing information directly from the "hardware" itself.

using the virtio drivers gives you a pretty quick onramp to having network and storage support.

you could* write a 1000 page book on vm...but writing a little interface that builds x84-64 page tables really is a couple hundred lines. interrupts another 1-2 hundred. threads another, syscall dispatch, etc.

I'm not suggesting that everyone go off and build their own production grade private OS.. but its a pretty fun exercise, and it gives you a really great perspective on whats going on down there.