fp.

- GentleOS/32 (https://github.com/luke8086/gentleos32) works on i386+, requires 4MB of RAM and VGA display supporting 640x480x16 mode or any 256-color VESA mode.

- GentleOS/16 (https://github.com/luke8086/gentleos) works on 80186+, requires less than 192KB of RAM and a CGA display supporting 320x200x4 mode.

You can find more details in the repos.

Comments

iamnothere•17h ago

This is great, thanks for releasing your work. Very impressive.

You may get some interest from others in the retrocomputing/permacomputing sphere if you implement an Uxn emulator; it is extremely simple and can run on very limited hardware. https://100r.co/site/uxn.html

Vintage hardware would be a great host for Uxn programs, so I suspect this would generate some excitement.

sandos•3h ago

Heh, the "small virtual machine" was NOT a lie! Is that less than 200 lines? Very nice!

Now I feel like integrating that into various things....

luke8086•1h ago

Thank you so much! Somehow I haven't heard about Uxn before, but it seems very cool and I'll definitely look into it.

iamnothere•10m ago

You’re welcome. You’d probably appreciate its focus on long-term stability; the authors wanted an environment for their software that would ensure code could stay frozen in a working state forever. The only thing that may need updates is the VM, as the host OS and userland will shift over time, but the VM is designed to be exceptionally easy to implement and maintain. That comes at the cost of some capabilities, but they were specifically aiming for simpler software, so it works out.

Aldipower•7h ago

A pre-build floppy disk image would be great, so I could run it on my IBM PS/1 from a floppy.

valleyer•7h ago

There seems to be an 8 meg image here: https://github.com/luke8086/gentleos32/releases/download/202...

ginko•6h ago

Someone prepare a set of floppy disk images so you can get the proper installation experience.

RobotToaster•5h ago

Including the mandatory corruption on the last one.

Aldipower•6h ago

This is a hdd image, I guess.

luke8086•5h ago

For PS/1 you'll need the 16-bit version from https://github.com/luke8086/gentleos. A floppy image is provided in releases. Note you only need to copy the first 64KB, the rest is just padding for emulators.

mysterydip•6h ago

> The only future plans are bugfixes, optimizations, and adding more apps.

Perfect. Nice to see a platform target stability instead of constantly reinventing itself and its APIs. Definitely want to give it a go!

reconnecting•6h ago

GUI looks a but BeOS inspired, but somehow even cleaner.

tecleandor•6h ago

I think it's that yellow bar what it makes it look like BeOS. And maybe the right hand menu bar. But once you check a B/W version, it doesn't look like BeOS that much.

luke8086•5h ago

Good catch, the yellow and blue colors are totally inspired by BeOS :D I'm even adjusting the default VGA palette to get the right tints in 16-color mode.

MisterTea•4h ago

More like a Win 3.1 theme with BeOS colors and a NeXT desktop.

shevy-java•6h ago

> A hobby operating system for vintage 32-bit PCs.

I am all in favour of great projects, but why a differentiation between 32-bits or 64-bits? I don't understand that. Is a computer that is 32 bit or 64 bit, either way which, not worthy?

Edit: I understand a motivation if it is on simplicity choosing one or the other, but other than that I don't see why that should ever be a goal worthy to be pursued. Software should really "just work" no matter the number of bits and bytes.

ReptileMan•6h ago

32 is vintager vintage

Aldipower•6h ago

32 bit vinteger ;-)

bayindirh•5h ago

You can do 32 bit voolean too, great for that vintage bitmasks to store application flags. =]

grebc•6h ago

“Vintage” 64 bit PC’s aren’t a thing.

> Edit: I understand a motivation if it is on simplicity choosing one or the other, but other than that I don't see why that should ever be a goal worthy to be pursued. Software should really "just work" no matter the number of bits and bytes.

Not really how software works.

Aldipower•6h ago

> “Vintage” 64 bit PC’s aren’t a thing.

Just sold my SGI Indigo 2 for 900 $ ! Vintage 64 bit is absolutely a thing. :-)

gt0•6h ago

Made me think of Breadbox Ensemble, which is GEOS, and was really lovely.

lproven•2h ago

FWIW, still around and now FOSS.

https://github.com/bluewaysw/pcgeos

mdct•5h ago

This reminds me of the era when operating systems felt more approachable and visually distinct. Modern UIs are often cleaner, but many of them have lost some of the personality that older systems had.

nosioptar•5h ago

I think this is fantastic! I love that the code is so clean my dumb ass can understand it despite not using C much.

sixothree•3h ago

The code is cleaner that what I was expecting from a C repo. Also, it's quite a feat to fit this into 4 MB on a 386.

lproven•2h ago

> it's quite a feat to fit this into 4 MB on a 386.

I had 2 different Librex 386SX laptops, with 4MB of RAM, on long-term loan from work around 1992. One was quite chunky, the 2nd was a slimline thing with an off-centre hinge.

I ran OS/2 2.0 on them both.

So I could run multiple DOS apps, and a WinOS2 VM containing Windows 3.0, meaning I could run Win16 apps as well. And native OS/2 apps, although I didn't have many.

Here's a pic of the original Librex:

https://books.google.im/books?id=tDwEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA27&redir_...

And the 2nd model:

https://www.reddit.com/r/vintagecomputing/comments/10gepdd/l...

TL;DR

A 386 with 4MB is small now but at the time this was a fairly serious workstation-level PC. At the time my work desktop was a 386DX but it had only 1MB of RAM.

In its time a 4MB 386 could run any one of multiple multitasking 32-bit protected-mode OSes, including OS/2 2.x, SCO Xenix, Coherent 3 or 4, DR Concurrent DOS/386, and so on.

This was a high-end bit of kit and with one of these OSes, or even with Quarterdeck DESQview, it could multitask half a dozen large and demanding DOS apps, or maybe a couple of the still fairly new Windows apps such as WinWord 1, or Excel 2.

icedchai•

hansvs•5h ago

Nice! The project also has a 16-bit variant https://github.com/luke8086/gentleos, not clear if it works on 8086 IBM PC, but I'll give it a go. Been looking for a reason to power up my IBM PC again.

Damjanski•4h ago

<3<3<3

amelius•4h ago

Part of why these images look so nice is because these systems were not so locked down.

vortegne•3h ago

What a lovely-looking OS! Also great to hear that the project isn't aiming for infinite changes!

Will be digging out some old hardware to test it out very soon, this is exciting!

phendrenad2•3h ago

Love the photos of it running on 386/486 laptops. So cute!

rasz•2h ago

Am I crazy or are the "photos" generated? I did have T1800 and it never looked like this. It had a very early very bad grayscale LCD wiht fiddly contrast control, not a perfect crisp vibrant OLED like this page shows.

example how one looks like irl https://allegrolokalnie.pl/oferta/laptop-toshiba-t1800 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxIc_UVKxvc

bor_real•1h ago

Perhaps a new panel was retrofitted into it?

rasz•1h ago

OLED panel? that would be a bigger hack than this OS :) Either all pictures are AI generated using QEMU templates that were there previously https://github.com/luke8086/gentleos32/commit/d40576226b7020... or those are real pictured beautified by AI. YT loves doing that to thumbnails, example https://hackaday.com/2026/06/03/hydraulic-drive-for-your-law...

ge96•2h ago

Ahh the Librettos... I had a couple of 50s at one point, one of those looks cool unusable thing and the brittle plastic damn, I opened it and the hinge snapped lmao my heart my soul

Unusuable because of how small the keys are

Waterluvian•2h ago

Kind of an odd statement I think, but I really like the aesthetic of early OS GUIs where you could tell half the tools were pretty much there as developer tools.

Dwedit•2h ago

There weren't too many GUIs that used the PC-BIOS font. Most of them wanted to get away from that.