Sorry, my question is a little weird, and is related to the hardware side of things. I’ve been really interested in contributing to the Hurd server and the experimental micro/nano kernel. But the issue is that I don’t know anything about kernel or system development.

I wanted to start by creating the “Hello world” equivalent of kernel. I’m thinking of learning C17, since I’ve heard that most of the issues with C11 was fixed in C17, and I want to wait for C2x to be a little mature, and also avoid it’s possible pitfalls for now, but I’m also open to trying either of Zig or Vale (not sure if the memory allocation would be a problem).

I’ve come across some articles saying that GNU folks are very strict about their hardware as well, and keeping that in mind, I want to use that constraint starting from the time I self-teach myself.

Is there any cheap hardware that is in compliance with GNU? How about RISC-V processors? They should be GNU compliant, I assume? Are there any other options? I’m really tight on budget as I’m jobless right now - so my option must be under ₹1k (about 12$, I guess), but I also don’t want to use something like a breadboard because that would be additional money I’ll have to spend. I want a full-blown SBC with very low specifications (RAM in mBs or kBs, single/dual core with very low IPC and frequency) because I have no clue on how to access display from other board without display connectors. I’ve not researched on other architecture, but I’m also okay with openPOWER and other open standards.

Here’s a few boards I’ve come across:

• Seeed Studio XIAO ESP32C3
• Sipeed BL808 M1s
• Sipeed Longan Nano
• DFRobot Beetle ESP32 – C3 (perhaps the most promising out of the three?)

But none of them are in SBC format, and I’m also not sure if either of them have display capabilities for console-like interface. And what about using storage drive? Should I worry about boot interface like BIOS and UEFI?