OS BUILDING

GOALS:
Fit on a floppy disk
x86 Architecture
Basic File operations (Delete, Move, Create Dir, list, run)
Simple programs running on the CPU itself

How would I go about doing this. What language should I use?

Minix 3 still lacks virtual memory, so programs like Firefox won't work. Various critics think the author writes Minix just to publicize his books. That said, there are dozens of Minix-based packages fitting on 1 or a few floppies. tomsrtbt was the best known at one time. Dillo and links/lynx were associated web browsers which now support graphics.

No one mentioned Freedos yet. Or the various open source DOS emulators like DosBox and dosemu.

BusyBox is a subset of UNIX commands meant to be small enough to fit in an embedded system.

BeOS predates Win3.1 as I recall. I don't know how small it was.

The learning curve might go faser if you join a project that solicits help like ReactOS and Wine.