RedBear-OS/docs/README.md

Redox OS Fork — Wayland, KDE & Linux Driver Compatibility

Technical documentation for forking Redox OS to include Wayland protocol support, KDE Plasma desktop environment, and a Linux driver compatibility layer.

Status note (2026-04-14): several documents below are historical implementation plans whose original "missing / not started" language is now stale. The repo already contains substantial Red Bear OS work under local/; use each document's top-level status notes together with local/docs/AMD-FIRST-INTEGRATION.md and local/docs/QT6-PORT-STATUS.md for current state.

Documents

#	Document	Description
01	Architecture Overview	Redox OS internals: microkernel, scheme system, driver model, display stack
02	Gap Analysis & Roadmap	What's missing between current Redox and our Wayland/KDE/driver-compat goals
03	Wayland on Redox	Deep-dive into Wayland protocol requirements and current porting status
04	Linux Driver Compatibility Layer	Design for a FreeBSD LinuxKPI-style driver compatibility shim
05	KDE Plasma on Redox	Feasibility study and implementation plan for KDE Plasma
06	Build System Setup	How to build Redox from this repository

Current State Summary (as of 2026-04-14)

• Display server: Orbital (custom, scheme-based) — works
• Wayland: libwayland + wayland-protocols built. Smallvil/cosmic-comp remain partial runtime experiments.
• Qt6: qtbase 6.11.0 (Core+Gui+Widgets+DBus+Wayland), qtdeclarative, qtsvg, qtwayland ALL BUILT
• D-Bus: 1.16.2 built for Redox. Qt6DBus enabled.
• KF6 Frameworks: mixed state — many real builds, but some packages are still shimmed or stubbed.
• Mesa: software-rendered path is present; full GBM / hardware-validated Wayland path is still incomplete.
• GPU drivers: redox-drm scheme daemon and AMD+Intel compile-oriented paths exist; hardware validation is still pending.
• Input: evdevd compiled, libevdev built, libinput 1.30.2 built
• Networking: native wired stack present (pcid-spawner → NIC daemon → smolnetd/dhcpd/netcfg), Red Bear ships a native netctl command, and RTL8125 is wired into the existing Realtek autoload path
• KDE: redbear-kde.toml exists and the recipe tree is populated, but the runtime stack is still incomplete.
• Linux driver compat: linux-kpi (31 C headers + 13 Rust FFI), redox-driver-sys, firmware-loader all compile.

Quick Start

# 1. Install dependencies (Arch/Manjaro)
sudo pacman -S --needed --noconfirm gdb meson nasm patchelf python-mako \
  doxygen expat file fuse3 gmp libjpeg-turbo libpng po4a scons \
  sdl12-compat syslinux texinfo xdg-utils zstd

# 2. Install Rust + tools
curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf https://sh.rustup.rs | sh -s -- -y
source "$HOME/.cargo/env"
cargo install just cbindgen

# 3. Configure for native build (no Podman)
echo 'PODMAN_BUILD?=0' > .config

# 4. Build (downloads cross-toolchain, then compiles)
make all

# 5. Run in QEMU
make qemu

Key Repositories

Repo	Purpose	URL
Kernel	Microkernel	https://gitlab.redox-os.org/redox-os/kernel
Base	Drivers + system components	https://gitlab.redox-os.org/redox-os/base
relibc	C library (Rust)	https://gitlab.redox-os.org/redox-os/relibc
Orbital	Display server + WM	https://gitlab.redox-os.org/redox-os/orbital
RedoxFS	Default filesystem	https://gitlab.redox-os.org/redox-os/redoxfs
libredox	System library	https://gitlab.redox-os.org/redox-os/libredox
This repo	Build system	https://gitlab.redox-os.org/redox-os/redox