Would certainly enjoy have an GUI-based OS like this running on it.
Nowadays we can use LVGL and C++ to write apps, or run script based C code using interpreters like Wrench: https://github.com/jingoro2112/wrench
What I'm missing is an GUI-based OS like Kolibri to launch apps.
Modern display signaling takes a lot of compute power simply due to the sheer complexity of it and even emulating something like VGA over I/O pins would eat most of not all the compute power available on an MCU.
So you’re essentially stuck with a terminal over the network with an ESP which if you again make graphical would cost more in rendering and stream compression than there is compute so you’re stuck with text based terminals.
Nowadays you can buy ESP32 boards that include touchscreen displays, memory card readers and so on for 13 euros with shipping included: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005006110360174.html
Don't even understand what you mean with "a lot of compute power". We've been using LVGL for GUI apps and playing movies on these devices since a long time just fine. Here is a demonstration of that board: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0AVyvwv0agk
This stuff even has mesh networking, and yet we still don't have Cybikos!
Perhaps not every OS needs to be portable like Linux...
Extremely hard indeed, probably more like a 95% rewrite. Might however make sense as a killer application for small ARM or Risc-V boards where Linux would be either overkill or too demanding.
You don't need a machine with exactly 8MB. Nowadays having 1GB RAM is under-powered enough that you'll probably have more fun with Kolibri than with a regular OS.
...but I want a link anyway
I remember finding outrageous that Linux required at least 8MB to run X Window System back in 1995. How far have we come.
What sort of "opportunity" did authors miss? They're not a business.
Or is writing ARM assembler necessarily more fun than writing x86?
From GP:
> Except you're not going to find a lot of PC hardware this under-powered; these kinds of systems are actually getting more expensive, as they're slowly getting relabeled as "vintage"
Super cool project though of course
I thought someone could enlarge the design to a more modern architecture when I found an old Compaq internal documentation showing the internal design of the first commercially available 80386 computer (Compaq Deskpro 386). I have just posted the reference on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38480275
Such new re-created computers would certainly be interesting to run legacy software, but it would also be very interesting to have modern and light-weigth software like KolibriOS (I know it requires a Pentium or more, but there is certainly little to change to downgrade to 80386).
But what if you could run Kolibri on a tiny, DIY, microcontroller-based computer? An ATmega or Cortex-M0, throw in some SRAM and I2C peripherals, run it off a couple of AA batteries and browse the web on that? That'd be ludicrously cool.