KolibriOS - Operating System Review

Overview:

Ahh KolibriOS, it has vesa graphics, a desktop, sound, networking, and powered by a FASM x86 assembly-coded kernel thats less than 100KB. That can run on a Pentium I with MMX and 8MB RAM.

Primarily, KolibriOS is developed in Russian,  although English, Spanish, and Italian Translations are also available. ( In my experience, on occasion you will find something that is only in Russian.)

This puny OS boots up off a Floppy disk image, or a real floppy disk if you wish, though there is a set of additional programs that are loaded from an external directory. (the live CD includes these)

The desktop is fast and responsive. And KolibriOS will boot in not much more time than it takes to load the floppy image into ram.

It has the usual selection of basic desktop tools, such as a file manager, a command shell, calculator mp3 player, the works.  it also has an impressive selection of demos. such the TinyGL gears demo in the screenshot.

as far as networking goes, WiFi leaves something to be desired, but it does support plenty of Ethernet cards. and yes the networking works in VirtualBox.  internet tools range from the usual diagnostic and configuration tools, to an IRC client and a basic web browser.

games:

KolibriOS comes with a decent selection of games, conveniently collected in a nifty game center.

From checkers to Snake to even Freecell

and lets not forget, There are various Emulators, Even DosBox. and here is a fun fact: DosBox does not run well on a 397Mhz Pentium II :p (I tried it)

And last but not least of the games, are source ports of Doom AND Quake.  Not bad.  Not bad at all.

Conclusion:

KolibriOS may not be as advanced as the big three, but it is quite impressive for what it is, and works excellently in VirtualBox and on older x86 PCs and I recommend checking it out in VirtualBox or on that old Pentium you might have sitting around.