Dev tools · alternatives · 2026
24 alternatives to Aurion OS, A 1.8MB OS with a browser, try it live (C/x86 ASM)
I posted Aurion OS a few weeks ago on HN. Since then, the OS has gone from Beta to v1.0 Release with a lot of improvements: Blaze Browser: HTML/CSS/JS rendering with tabs and a developer console (local only, no full http/https support for now) Installer with user account setup and app selection Multi-resolution support (800x600 to 2560x1440, I plan to add 4096x2160 pixels in next versions) Unix-style luka@aurion prompt Serbian keyboard layout Python interpreter and Make build system 50+ terminal commands Window manager improvements and bug fixes 1.8MB ISO (entire OS including…
Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes.
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Hi HN! I'm 13 and I built Aurion OS as a solo learning project over 14 days (~12 hours/day). It's a 32-bit x86 operating system written entirely in C and x86 Assembly with no external libraries. What it has: Custom bootloader and kernel VESA framebuffer graphics (1920x1080, double-buffered) Window manager with draggable, overlapping windows macOS-inspired dock with transparency PS/2 keyboard and mouse drivers ATA hard drive driver with filesystem PCI bus enumeration RTL8139 network driver (WIP) Real-time clock Runs on just 16MB RAM (up to 10 windows simultaneously) Built-in apps:…
Mar 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →
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Hello HN! Showing off the first version of Munal OS, an experimental operating system I have been writing in Rust on and off for the past few years. https://github.com/Askannz/munal-os It's an unikernel design that is compiled as a single EFI binary and does not use virtual address spaces for process isolation. Instead, applications are compiled to WASM and run inside of an embedded WASM engine. Other features: * Fully graphical interface in HD resolution with mouse and keyboard support * Desktop shell with window manager and contextual radial menus * PCI and VirtIO…
2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
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https://lisagui.com/info.html This is a web OS I wrote in vanilla JS that looks like the Apple Lisa Office System (1983-85), with other contemporaneous influences and additional improvements and features. It's currently in alpha and isn't remotely bug free. I had been holding off on posting this here until it was somewhat presentable and useful. Please note; the Lisa conforms more literally to the desktop metaphor than most modern GUIs - some of the important differences are mentioned in the readme. This is a complete recreation of the UI in JS; it all renders to a single…
2025 · alpha.lisagui.com · its alternatives →
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We’ve been building infrastructure to spin up browsers for AI agents. Originally, we built[0] it as a pool of warm Docker containers running Chromium, exposing: - Chrome DevTools Protocol (for Playwright/Puppeteer) - noVNC (for live view) We’ve been following the unikernel space for a while, so we decided to see if we could get our image on one. We went with Unikraft Cloud[1]. Here’s how it did: - Boot-up time: 10–20ms (vs. ~5s for Docker containers) - Near 0 CPU/memory consumption when idle - Still ~8GB RAM when active (headful Chromium) Potential use cases: - Standby mode during…
2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
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Hi there! I've been on-and-off working on TacOS for a few months, which follows some UNIX-derived concepts (exec/fork, unix-style VFS, etc) and is now able to run a port of Doom, with a fairly small amount of modifications, using my from-scratch libc. The performance is actually decent compared to what I expected. Very interested to hear your thoughts. Thank you!
2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
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Hi HN! I’ve always been a fan of application launchers, and I was impressed by the approach the Raycast team took — especially their extension system. About six months ago I started building something similar for Linux, aiming to integrate deeply at the OS level and give extensions a lot of power. Vicinae is written in C++ with Qt Widgets. I chose Widgets over QML for more imperative control of the UI, especially around extension handling. So far that’s worked well — modern C++ is great. To support my goals I built a number of custom widgets, including a fully virtualized list that can…
2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
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Battery info program for x86-64 Linux laptops in 307 bytes of machine code - meribold/btry
2024 · github.com · its alternatives →
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A minimal RISC-V 32-bit OS written in Zig. Contribute to botirkhaltaev/pico-os development by creating an account on GitHub.
2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
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This project contains no code from Linux, BSD, Minix, or any other OS. Everything up until this point is written entirely from scratch, including a pure microkernel (that only implements multiprocessor priority scheduling, memory management, and interprocess communication), a work-in-progress implementation of the standard C library, and a variety of servers that provide drivers and other essential OS functionality. At the time of writing this post, the servers provide drivers for the keyboard, NVMe SSDs (that works on real hardware), a Unix-like virtual file system (with a single root…
2024 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 10
10 months ago I posted on HN to announce the initial release of Vicinae, an "everything" command palette compatible with the Raycast extension ecosystem, only available on Linux. Today, after months of work, I'm finally releasing the first macOS version of Vicinae, with full feature parity with the Linux version! From a technical standpoint, it is still a Qt/C++ app with a Node.js powered extension runtime (like Raycast). Something as deeply system-integrated requires calling a lot of native APIs, and when I started the port I wasn't quite sure how easy it would be. Turns out it went a…
Jul 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →
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Aurora's C++ units library called "Au" (rhymes with "hey you!") has been a small but critical tool in Aurora's software development toolbox. Today, we're sharing it with the world[1]: Au is now open source for all to use. Feel free to ask me any questions! [1] https://blog.aurora.tech/engineering/introducing-au-our-open...
2023 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 12
A fast and open replacement for Windows and macOS
2016 · elementary.io · its alternatives →
- 13IM
Try it at: ssh krnl.duetbrowser.com No sign up, totally free - no download. Let me know what you think. Prior art exists (brow.sh) but I wasn't satisfied with their graphical take. I wanted the raw, old skool terminal days of the early internet - BBS, and old green phosphor library comptuers - but running the modern web, with all the bells and jingle jangle whistles (JavaScript, etc). No funding, no VC, just 100% raw terminal fun. Not sure how long the demo will last, but try it out.
Jul 2026 · its alternatives →
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May 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →
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I made my first macOS utility app that ships with a bundled Gemma 4 model, specifically the Gemma E4B one. It made my app DMG have 5.3 GB in size, but I think it is a small size for the power that this free local model can provide. It runs fine on CPU, but can also run on Apple Silicon GPU, although I did not notice any performance improvements with GPU (tested on a M5 chip). I think these local lightweight and multimodal models will open multiple possibilities for new software tools where privacy is essential.
May 2026 · snapname.app · its alternatives →
- 19
This is a personal project I've been working on and off for the past few years. It's a set of tools that have allowed me to prototype quickly small (and increasingly bigger) kernels, and create userspace programs to interact with them. Supports riscv64, amd64 and i386. The intel port has been tested and used on real hardware, from big dual-socket Xeon machines to an old X220. It is all C, I have plan to make rust bindings for the kernel library. But again, they're plans at this stage. Porting to new architectures is relatively simple, a basic port to riscv took me a couple of weeks of…
2024 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 20
I was debating when to post this, but I've been using it locally in a variety of situations for several months and I think it's pretty stable (and usable!). There are more features I'd like to add, but I wanted to see if there was much interest before spending much more time on it right now.
2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 21
Hey HN! I made a completely open sourced alternative to Weights and Biases with (insert cringe) blazingly fast performance (yes we use rust and clickhouse) Weights and Biases is super unperformant, their logger blocks user code... logging should not be blocking, yet they got away with it. We do the right thing by being non blocking. Would love any thoughts / feedbacks / roasts etc
2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
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- 24OT
I started this as a weekend project and posted it on HN 5 years ago. 300,000 users later, I just released v4 today. Octotree [1] gives GitHub a sidebar that improves file navigation and code/pull request review. Works on Chrome, Firefox, Opera and Safari. Any comment or feedback is appreciated. [1]: https://www.octotree.io/
2019 · its alternatives →
Also compare
- Aurion OS – A 32-bit GUI operating system written from scratch in C alternatives
- Munal OS: a graphical experimental OS with WASM sandboxing alternatives
- I wrote a "web OS" based on the Apple Lisa's UI, with 1-bit graphics alternatives
- We Put Chromium on a Unikernel (OSS Apache 2.0) alternatives
- My from-scratch OS kernel that runs DOOM alternatives
- Vicinae – A native, Raycast-compatible launcher for Linux alternatives
Ranked by how close each launch is in meaning, then by votes. Prices were read from each product’s own site when checked and can change. Refine with your own description →