KolibriOS: The Operating System That Fits On A 1.44 MB 3.5″ Floppy Disk

While most operating systems are written in C and C++, KolibriOS is written in pure x86 assembly and as a result small and lightweight enough to run off a standard 1.44 MB floppy disk, as demonstrated in a recent video by [Michael].

Screenshot of the KolibriOS desktop on first boot with default wallpaper.
Screenshot of the KolibriOS desktop on first boot with default wallpaper.

As a fork of 32-bit MenuetOS back in 2004, KolibriOS has since followed its own course, sticking to the x86 codebase and requiring only a modest system with an i586-compatible CPU, 8 MB of RAM and VESA-compatible videocard. Unlike MenuetOS’ proprietary x86_64 version, there’s no 64-bit in KolibriOS, but at this level you probably won’t miss it.

In the video by [Michael], the OS boots incredibly fast off both a 3.5″ floppy and a CD-ROM, with the CD-ROM version having the advantage of more software being provided with it, including shareware versions of DOOM and Wolfenstein 3D.

Although web browsers (e.g. Netsurf) are also provided, [Michael] did not get Ethernet working, though he doesn’t say whether he checked the hardware compatibility list. Quite a few common 3Com, Intel and Realtek NICs are supported out of the box.

For audio it was a similar story, with the hardware compatibility left unverified after audio was found to be not working. Despite this, the OS was fast, stable, runs DOOM smoothly and overall seems to be a great small OS for x86 platforms that could give an old system a new lease on life.

12 thoughts on “KolibriOS: The Operating System That Fits On A 1.44 MB 3.5″ Floppy Disk

      1. A family member had it run on a 386DX-40 in the 90s, but with 16MB of RAM.

        In my opinion, running Windows 95 or OS/2 on a weak processor was fine back in the day, but running them on low memory was just dumb*.
        Because of heavy swap file usage. Complex OSes need RAM in order to be able to think.
        Windows 95 stops exzessive swapping past 32 MB or so.

        (*lack of money was no excuse, because it apparently was somehow available for other things; fat graphics cards, games, big monitors, wavetable sound cards etc.
        And yes, I saw PCs suffering at crawling Windows 95 back in the 90s, on as low as 4 MB. It was horrible, the HDDs screamed.).

          1. Exactly! I remember this with Windows 98SE on a Pentium 75 with 24 MB of RAM, I think.
            It worked “okay”, but HDD usage was still noticeable (32, 48 or 64 MB would have been wiser).
            Clicking on the start menu caused the hard disk to whirr and it caused an 0,5 to 1,5 sec delay until the start menu had folded open.
            The real “struggling” started when clicking start -> programs, though..
            That’s when Windows 98SE was checking for all the start menu entries of the installed programs.
            Looking back I was lucky that Windows 98 had the ability to execute code from VCache, otherwise it could have been even worse.

  1. Hi, also notable are ports of OpenGL Gears (Tiny GL Gears), CHIP-8, DOSBox, FAR Manager (Norton Commander replica), ScummVM, FCE (NES/Famicom emu), gngb (GB emu), 8086 Tiny, psx4all, DGEN (Sega Genesis emu), ZSNES..

    In short, KolibriOS has many ports or implementations of things that people remember from 16-Bit and 32-Bit era.
    Not bad for such a small system, really.
    Especially SDL based projects can be ported over, I think.

    DOSBox (20y old port): https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?t=9510
    FCE Ultra screenshot: https://tinyurl.com/2aae6ech
    KolibriOS stored on DNA: https://www.osnews.com/story/29697/kolibrios-stored-on-dna/

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