[Intro]
Hello! You someday asked a question: are there any operating systems that are both lightweight and have extensive functionality?
Hmm, and have you seen a system that fits on a regular 1.4 megabyte floppy disk and is written in pure assembler? No?
It's time to fix this: today we a look at KolibriOS, and find out how it all started.
KolibriOS is an operating system written entirely in FASM assembler and distributed under the terms of the GPL license. Based on MenuetOS, which was founded in 2000 and forked from 2004.
The name and logo of the system originated from the fastest and smallest bird on the planet - the Hummingbird.
KolibriOS is an alternative operating system because it uses its own standards and is not POSIX-based. The system is designed to use assembler to write applications, but there are also programs written in high-level languages (that is, C, Pascal, and the like)
The main ideas are to minimize the consumed system resources, optimize programs to increase their performance, as well as use the assembly language of the main KolibriOS development language and programs for it.
KolibriOS is developed by people from different countries: Ukraine, Belarus, Russia, Germany and so on.
The latest version dates from, ahem, December 2009, but nightly builds are still being updated.
At the time of the video filming, the nightly build was released on May 1, 2021. Yes, the ISO image weighs 70 megabytes, but this is along with applications and other demo stuff.
And the base itself, which is in the kolibri.img file, weighs exactly 1.4 megabytes, which allows you to write this system to a regular floppy disk.
The system is not demanding on hardware: it requires only Pentium 1 and 8 megabytes of RAM ... Now, let's take a look at the OS itself
We start our computer, insert the .ISO file and see the setup stage, which allows you to select the video mode, detect hard drives, enable debug. But since all the settings are fine with us, we just press Enter and wait for the system to start.
And after launching, we are greeted by a desktop with a huge number of programs: games, file managers, development tools, drawing tools, browsers, editors, and so on.
And if you move the cursor to the left side of the screen, a kind of dock panel will appear, which will contain programs like a MIDI player, CPUID, IRC client, text editor, shortcut to access system settings, and more.
The control panel in this system is made in the style of MacOS - and this, as for me, is very beautiful.
In the first section, you can customize the background, theme, sound, date and time. Basically, the most basic system stuff.
In the second section, you can run various kinds of programs that allow you to monitor the state of the system or network.
And in the third section, you can run various kinds of benchmarks, view information about the system and devices.
The system has a "Game Center", which contains a large number of games, and among them there are even Doom, Quake and Wolf3D.
But they are only available in the ISO version.
They even ported the DosBox emulator, which really surprised me.
So, let's move on to file managers - there are three of them: Kolibri File Manager, Kolibri Far and Eolite File Manager.
The first parodies the interface of the well-known Total Commander program, and the second repeats the interface of the FAR program, which in turn repeats the interface of the Norton Commander program for DOS. But the third is made in the Windows XP Explorer design. As for me, even quite good.
The system even has browsers with which you can access the Internet - WebView and NetSurf.
Of course, they don't work very well, but sites open, images are shown, styles are loaded - it's at least something more than nothing.
Of the interesting multimedia programs, MidAMP is worth noting.
It is clear from the name and design that this is essentially a local WinAMP, but this program only plays MIDI files.
On a real computer, the system also boots perfectly: both from a CD/DVD, and from a regular USB drive. On my old PC, the system booted without any problems.
In general, I really liked the system. I am amazed by the fact that a full-fledged system can really be written to one full-fledged floppy disk, and with all standard applications (except for games, of course) and a browser.
The goal of the project is "to create a compact operating system the size of one regular floppy disk."
And in my opinion, the developers did a great job. You can download this OS from the official website of the project and test it yourself, it all depends on your decision and desire.
What do you think of this OS? Leave your opinion in the comments, they are always open.
And that's all. If you liked it, like it and subscribe to the channel. See you later!