A while ago, we looked at an amazingly tiny Linux distribution – TinyCore Linux. At just 11MB, the stuff it managed to pack in was quite something.
Now we have something EVEN smaller for you – the 1.44MB KolibriOS – a full blown operating system written in assembly.
How the Hell did they make it that small??
KolibriOS is written completely in assembly – absolutely no high-level programming languages like C or Python. This means (apart from being hideously difficult to write), it’s ridiculously small and amazingly fast.
KolibriOS forked off MenuetOS, another hobby OS written in assembly in 2004.
(Menuet is still going strong, but is a little big at 22MB 
)
Is Kolibri a full-fledged OS?
Yes, KolibriOS is a full operating system with a GUI. It even packs in more features that TinyCore, which is nearly ten times it’s size.
This is what the desktop looks like:
And believe it or not, it’s got ATI video drivers! 
Wireless? Network drivers? Sound?
You can forget about wireless, though there apparently is support for SoundBlaster cards and some network cards.
But hey, you shouldn’t be complaining – it’s 1.44 megabytes.
But when it does work, it works like a charm. Have an old 100MHz pentium you want to resurrect? This will run faster on it than anything else runs on your new Quad Core box. Believe it.
More information, Downloads
You can find out more about KolibriOS from it’s website. The Wiki is a good place to start.
You can download a copy of KolibriOS from here.
Note that there is an English and a Russian version – choose the correct one.
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Hi, My name is Narayanan and i'm your resident blogger. Technology and internet have always fascinated me and that's the reason behind the origin of this blog. Thanks for visiting Tech Spikes :)