Check out the Parallax Propeller, there is a GUI-based OS for it. And Forth, at the same time.

Doesn't look promissing, sorry. Was looking and looking, but where is the GUI-based OS?

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.

ESP32 has no display hardware even if it is more powerful than many computers of the 80’s those did come with dedicated graphics/display cards.

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.

You can run a passable GUI over SPI using displays with an integrated frame buffer. LVGL in particular is a GUI lib optimized to render strips of updated data rather than full frames and it performs well with such devices.

Yes, I've been doing that. LVGL is amazing. Still, I'm waiting for the time when we have a GUI-based OS available. The possibility of running scripts that work as apps from a memory card and so on.

My apologies but that statement is the same as saying that a Pentium IV has no display hardware. You are right that a CPU has no display card but missed the point because we speak here about support for running an OS on that CPU in connection with peripherals.

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

I've been wondering for a long time when we're going to get an open OS for making app-capable ESP32 stuff. We've got the Cardputer and the t-keyboard, the hardware is there.

This stuff even has mesh networking, and yet we still don't have Cybikos!