Seeing this run on real hardware is so satisfying, even if it’s just a small example. 😅

https://movq.de/v/ec46b8cf99/netbook.mp4

My little toy operating system from last year runs in 16-bit Real Mode (like DOS). Since I’ve recently figured out how to switch to 64-bit Long Mode right after BIOS boot, I now have a little program that performs this switch on my toy OS. It will load and run any x86-64 program, assuming it’s freestanding, a flat binary, and small enough (< 128 KiB code, only uses the first 2 MiB of memory).

Here I’m running a little C program (compiled using normal GCC, no Watcom trickery):

https://movq.de/v/b27ced6dcb/los86%2D64.mp4

https://movq.de/v/b27ced6dcb/c.png

Next steps could include:

• Use Rust instead of C for that 64-bit program?
  
• Provide interrupt service routines. (At the moment, it just keeps interrupts disabled.)

Oh, that’s cute: https://movq.de/v/046fb6ee70/s.png DuckDuckGo puts a little helmet on the duck when you search for Skyrim. (Katria is a Skyrim character.)

Mastodon has a “Wrapstodon 2025” now, showing you a “wrap up” of the year. Of course, a pointless funny shitpost was my most “successful” post in 2025. 😂

https://movq.de/v/b9cf9e3ca0/s.png

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org I was surprised by that as well. 😅 I thought these were features that you can use, but no, you must do all this.

By the way, I now fixed the issue that I mentioned at the end and it works on the netbook now. 🥳

https://www.uninformativ.de/blog/postings/2025-12-21/0/netbook.jpg

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org Yeah, well, given that I didn’t need this for such a long time, it’s probably not an essential tool. 😅

I’ve often wanted to have an outline of text documents, though, and tagbar/ctags can do that as well:

https://movq.de/v/3c6d1a13d6/tagbar-md.png

https://movq.de/v/abc58e6d66/tagbar-latex.png

This isn’t as powerful as the “Navigator” tool in StarOffice/LibreOffice (which can be used to rearrange the document), but still pretty useful:

https://www.uninformativ.de/blog/postings/2024-05-23/0/so31.mp4

Ooooooooooh! If your .vimrc is as messy as mine, you’ll be pleased to learn that Tagbar can show a sorted list of all key mappings:

https://movq.de/v/0f37d13a01/s.png

🤯