German version: README_de.md
Q9 is a new operating system with historical roots. Back in the 1980s, I was a big fan of Microware OS-9/68K and later also OS-9000. As a student I worked a lot with these systems and was convinced they would catch on sooner or later. In hindsight, I was a bit too optimistic about that — most people today have probably never heard of OS-9.
In an age of Linux and many other free operating systems, I'd still like to bring the idea back to life. Q9 is meant to become a compatible, portable operating-system kernel that stays as close to OS-9 as possible, letting it run historical OS-9 programs while also making it possible to develop new ones. Later, Q9 is meant to be extended with modern features.
The starting point — as with Microware — is the historical Motorola 68000 processor family. The goal is a compatible, modular and portable kernel with its own I/O system and its own I/O managers. There's still quite a bit of work ahead until then.
Q9-Forge brings together the projects needed to develop, run and extend Q9:
- Q9-OS — operating-system kernel and OS foundations, plus the I/O system.
- Q9-Flux — emulator and hardware visualization for 68k, x86 and device components.
- Q9-QCC — compiler toolchain with parser generator, C frontend, IR intermediate code, backends and interpreter.
- Q9-Tools — system, network and language utilities for Q9 and OS-9.
The projects are split into independent repositories. Architecture- dependent code is kept separate within each project; shared sources live in their own areas.
Version numbers indicate the internal development state and are not stable releases.
| Project | Status | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Q9-OS | Foundations and kernel development | |
| - Q9-OS Kernel 68k | 🟡 0.1 | Boots and runs |
| - Q9-OS Kernel x86 | 🔴 | Not started |
| - Q9-OS IOMAN 68k | 🔴 | Not started |
| - Q9-OS IOMAN x86 | 🔴 | Not started |
| Q9-Flux | Active emulator development | |
| - Q9-Flux 68k | 🟢 0.15 | Working development version |
| - Q9-Flux x86 | 🔴 0.1 | Early development and analysis |
| Q9-QCC | Active compiler development | |
| - Q9-QCC C frontend | 🟢 0.15 | In development |
| - Q9-QCC 68k backend | 🟢 0.15 | Working development version |
| - Q9-QCC x86 backend | 🔴 0.1 | Early development |
| - Q9-QCC ARM64 backend | 🔴 0.1 | Early development |
| - Q9-QCC Run | 🟢 0.1 | IR interpreter in development |
| Q9-Tools | 🟢 0.1 | System, network and language utilities |
These indicators are adjusted as development progresses and are mainly meant to give a quick overview of each project's maturity and focus.
Q9-Forge is under active development. The current focus is on the Q9 kernel, the 68k emulator, and rounding out the Q9-QCC toolchain.
More information:
A substantial part of the code in these repositories was written with
AI assistance (Claude Code and OpenAI Codex). Commits made with Claude
Code carry a Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 5 trailer in the commit
history; Codex-assisted commits are not separately marked.
We've tried to remove AGENTS.md and PROJECT.md from every public
repository (see each repo's .gitignore). Even so: docs/ directories,
and occasionally other locations, may still contain further files with
instructions or data directed at AI assistants — for example working
journals or planning notes from collaborating with an LLM.
Before handing such a file to an AI to act on, please review its content first and adjust or remove anything you don't want followed.
Supporters and contributors are welcome. Questions, bug reports, ideas and proposed improvements can be filed as an Issue. If you'd like to contribute code or documentation, feel free to open a Pull Request.