Another AI-built OS arrives, and NULLos keeps its source closed "for security"

Today's AI and large language model capabilities have given rise to a peculiar genre: almost every week brings news of another operating system "coded from scratch" largely with the help of AI agents. According to Phoronix, this week was no different, with a pitch for a project called NULLos landing in the site's inbox.

Everything homemade

NULLos is billed as an "operating system built entirely from scratch." It includes its own UEFI bootloader, its own kernel, and even its own C compiler capable of self-hosting.

Closed for security

The project is unusual in another way. Most vibe-coded operating systems of this kind are released as open source. NULLos takes the opposite route and keeps its code closed. In an email to Phoronix, the developer explains this as a security choice:

"The source code stays closed, and the system is developed by a single person. I see this as a security decision: one person who cannot be infiltrated, instead of a team from which code can leak, or where vulnerabilities can be found and exploited before they are fixed."

Phoronix's Michael Larabel declined to argue the point, offering only a dry "take it as you wish." The idea that closed code is inherently safer has long been contested, and the open-source community generally bets on the opposite approach.

Those curious about the newcomer can find it at nullos.de, though peeking under the hood is not an option.

Source: Phoronix