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Documentation Index

Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://mintlify.com/pastaboy12345/SilverOS/llms.txt

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SilverOS ships a fully graphical desktop environment that runs directly on bare metal with no OS beneath it. After the kernel initialises hardware, the system transitions into a pixel-rendered shell with a gradient background, a taskbar, a start menu, draggable windows, and a login screen. Every visual element — from the deep indigo background to the blinking terminal cursor — is drawn by the kernel itself through the framebuffer driver.

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Desktop components

Window Manager

Z-ordered, draggable windows with per-window draw, key, and click callbacks. Supports up to 16 simultaneous windows.

Terminal

Built-in command interpreter with filesystem, network, memory, and system commands.
Beyond windows, the desktop includes these always-visible components:
  • Taskbar — A 32-pixel bar anchored to the bottom of the screen. It holds the “Silver” menu button, one clickable button per open window, and a live clock.
  • Start menu — A pop-up panel launched from the “Silver” button. Lists five entries: File Browser, Terminal, About, a separator, and Shutdown.
  • Login screen — A centered window shown at boot. Accepts a username and password, validated by the user subsystem before the desktop becomes interactive.
  • Desktop background — A full-screen vertical gradient drawn every frame behind all windows.

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Boot-to-desktop flow

1

Boot menu in kernel_main

The kernel presents a text-mode boot menu. The user selects Start SilverOS Desktop to continue.
2

Boot animation

bootanim_play() runs a short graphical animation to signal that the system is starting.
3

desktop_init()

desktop_init() zeroes the window manager state, sets up the default filesystem structure under SilverFS, and creates the login window centered on screen.
4

Login screen

The graphical login window presents Username and Password fields. The user types credentials (Tab switches fields, Enter submits). The kernel calls user_login() to validate.
5

Session start

On a successful login the login window is destroyed, terminal_open() is called automatically to launch the terminal, and execution falls into desktop_run() — the infinite event loop that drives all desktop activity.

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Desktop visual design

All colours are defined as 32-bit RGB(r, g, b) values at the top of desktop/desktop.c. The full theme:
ElementColorValue
Background topDeep indigoRGB(25, 25, 50)
Background bottomIndigo-navyRGB(40, 45, 65)
TaskbarVery dark blue-blackRGB(20, 20, 35)
Taskbar top borderMuted blue-greyRGB(60, 65, 80)
Window titlebar (unfocused)Dark slateRGB(45, 45, 70)
Window titlebar (focused)Brighter slate-blueRGB(70, 75, 110)
Titlebar textCool off-whiteRGB(210, 215, 225)
Window bodyVery dark blueRGB(30, 30, 48)
Window borderDark blue-greyRGB(55, 58, 75)
Close buttonDeep redRGB(180, 50, 50)
Close button (hover)Brighter redRGB(220, 70, 70)
”Silver” menu buttonMuted indigoRGB(55, 60, 85)
Clock textMuted blue-greyRGB(170, 175, 190)
WatermarkDim dark blueRGB(50, 55, 70)
The background gradient is drawn each frame with fb_draw_gradient_v(). Window titlebars also receive a subtle top-edge highlight by blending each pixel row with white at decreasing alpha over the upper half of the titlebar. The text “SilverOS v0.1” is rendered as a watermark in the bottom-right of the desktop area (above the taskbar).

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Login system

The user subsystem is declared in include/user.h: 
#define MAX_USERS     16
#define MAX_USERNAME  32

typedef struct {
    int uid;
    char username[MAX_USERNAME];
    char password_hash[64]; /* plaintext for demo */
} user_t;

void        user_init(void);
bool        user_login(const char *username, const char *password);
int         user_get_current_uid(void);
const char *user_get_current_username(void);
bool        user_create(const char *username, const char *password);
user_init() is called during kernel startup. If /etc/passwd does not exist it seeds a single default account with username root and password silver. user_login(username, password) checks the supplied credentials and, on success, records the current UID so that user_get_current_uid() and user_get_current_username() return the correct values for the session. The graphical login window behaves as follows:
  • Tab switches focus between the Username and Password input fields; the focused field is drawn with a slightly lighter background.
  • Enter (or clicking the “Login” button) submits the credentials to user_login().
  • On a wrong password, the password field is cleared and the user can try again without restarting.
  • The password field renders each character as * so the plaintext is never visible on screen.

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Default filesystem at first boot

desktop_init() creates a minimal directory tree in SilverFS before showing the login screen:
PathTypeContents
/home/Directory—
/home/user/Directory—
/etc/Directory—
/tmp/Directory—
/etc/hostnameFilesilveros
/home/user/readme.txtFileWelcome message with help tip
The welcome message written to /home/user/readme.txt is: 
Welcome to SilverOS!
This is your home directory.
Type 'help' in the terminal for commands.

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Taskbar

The taskbar is drawn at the bottom of the screen as a 32-pixel-tall strip (TASKBAR_HEIGHT = 32). It contains three zones rendered left to right:
  1. “Silver” menu button — A labelled button at x=4. Clicking it toggles menu_open, which shows or hides the start menu pop-up above the taskbar.
  2. Window buttons — One 120-pixel-wide button per open window, starting at x=100 with a 6-pixel gap between buttons. The button for the currently focused window is drawn in TITLEBAR_FOCUSED (RGB(70, 75, 110)); all others use MENU_BTN_BG (RGB(55, 60, 85)). Clicking any button calls focus_window() for that window.
  3. Clock — Positioned at the far right (fb.width - 60). Reads the current time from the RTC via rtc_get_time() on every frame and displays it as HH:MM.

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Start menu

The start menu is a 160×126-pixel panel that appears just above the “Silver” button when menu_open is true. It contains five entries:
#LabelAction
0File BrowserCalls file_browser_open("/")
1TerminalCalls terminal_open()
2AboutOpens an “About SilverOS” window
—(separator)Horizontal rule drawn across the menu
4ShutdownCalls outb(0x604, 0x00) (ACPI power-off in QEMU)
Clicking anywhere outside the menu area closes it without taking any action.
desktop_run() never returns. It is an infinite while (1) loop that continuously redraws the framebuffer, processes mouse and keyboard events, and advances window state with a ~16 ms sleep between frames (sleep_ms(16)). SilverOS has no scheduler or process model — the desktop loop is the running system after boot.

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