Model 0.7.0 of ELKS OS, and 0.4.0 of its creator’s subsequent child, Fuzix, are out – in the event you like your ‘nix techniques as tiny as may be.
Neither of those OSes is a Linux distro – or perhaps a type of Linux in any respect – however ELKS is expounded to the Linux kernel. ELKS is shorthand for the Embedded Linux Kernel Subset – it is a minimal Linux-like kernel which does not require a reminiscence administration unit.
Linux was initially written for Intel’s 32-bit 80386 processor household, which usually sported a page-based MMU amongst different options. As a result of ELKS does not want that stage of reminiscence administration, it is capable of run on the 2 even older households of x86 chip that predated x86-32: the 8086 and the 80286. In its early days – the undertaking began approach again in 1995 – ELKS was referred to as Linux-8086.
ELKS was began by core Linux kernel hacker Alan Cox, who within the early days of Linux was usually referred to as Linus Torvalds’s second in command. He stop his Linux position a decade in the past now – lengthy after he had largely stopped engaged on ELKS.
This is among the issues that makes the undertaking attention-grabbing for us. From the Web Archive copy of the unique undertaking web page, you may see vital progress early on. It later moved house, and on its Sourceforge web page you may see that some 15 years later, it had nonetheless solely reached model 0.2.0.
Now it is hosted on Microsoft’s GitHub, and its launch historical past exhibits a change of tempo prior to now few years. After present lead developer Gregory Haerr took over, there have been 4 releases since 2020, and it is as much as 0.7.0.
ELKS operating from laborious disk, utilizing a large 2¼MB of a 32MB drive picture.
Again in July, we wrote about a number of fashionable descendants of UNIX model 6 and seven, and ELKS is even smaller – it could possibly match onto and boot from a 360KB floppy disk. We concede we will not envision a manufacturing position for ELKS – however then once more, as we coated lately, individuals are making model new 8088 PCs this century. ELKS 0.7.0 provides help for the NuXT motherboard we talked about in that story, in addition to the extremely popular 3Com Etherlink III ISA community card. As a tiny however practical OS it is a good way to find out about working system design.
In the event you fancy taking part in with ELKS to see what it could possibly do, there are numerous ready-to-run photos to obtain – for something from authentic 40-track 5¼ inch floppies to preinstalled laborious disk photos for VMs. There’s additionally a GitHub wiki with documentation. If establishing a VM looks as if an excessive amount of work, you may even run an emulator in your browser.
ELKS can do graphics, as effectively. That is the ‘nxworld’ app in superb VGA decision
ELKS is not the one tiny Unix-like OS for very low-end techniques in lively improvement. Only a month earlier than ELKS 0.7.0, the undertaking that Alan Cox moved on to subsequent – Fuzix – additionally up to date, to model 0.4.0.
We have talked about Fuzix on The Reg earlier than, as a Unix-like OS for the Raspberry Pi Pico. However it could possibly additionally run on even smaller techniques: CP/M-class {hardware} such because the RC2014 or Amstrad NC200.
Fuzix combines a number of totally different forks that enhanced an older Unix-like OS for Z80 machines referred to as Uzi, initially by Doug Braun again within the Nineteen Eighties. An older snapshot of the code, along with a very good potted historical past, is in one other GitHub repo.
These initiatives are each nice illustrations of the facility of free software program and open supply. Provided that Alan Cox himself declared ELKS principally useless in the beginning of 2001, the truth that it sprang again to life some 20 years later is heart-warming. Fuzix, in the meantime, is predicated on code almost twice that outdated.
A number of spectacular, invaluable software program has been misplaced to historical past, although some outstanding initiatives, resembling Perihelion’s Helios cluster OS, are sitting there on GitHub ready for somebody to wake them from their slumber.
The tutorial worth of this sort of undertaking can also be essential. In a world of grotesque software program bloat, when a instrument to jot down a disk picture to USB can fill 225MB – and your vulture is scripting this piece in a textual content editor that, whereas a pleasure to make use of, takes a outstanding 400MB of disk house – it is refreshing to come across whole working techniques that want solely one-thousandth as a lot house. ®
