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Life & fun · alternatives · 2026

24 alternatives to I wrote a BASIC interpreter that boots on UEFI machines

I started writing Thoreau BASIC because I wanted a small, old-fashioned BASIC interpreter: line numbers, immediate mode, simple graphics, strings, arrays, the sort of environment where the computer starts with a "Ready" prompt and you can immediately make it do something. Then I wondered: why should it need an operating system? So I made it boot directly on x64 machines using UEFI. The UEFI version uses the Graphics Output Protocol for its framebuffer and gets its keyboard input directly from the firmware. There is no Windows or Linux underneath it. The machine boots into BASIC. It supports…

Thoreau BASIC is a modern BASIC interpreter that runs on x64 Windows or boots directly on bare-metal UEFI systems without an operating system. It provides a classic BASIC environment with a "Ready" prompt and… Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes.

  1. 1

    A BASIC interpreter written in golang. Contribute to skx/gobasic development by creating an account on GitHub.

    2018 · github.com · its alternatives →

  2. 2

    (Very) basic UNIX-like operating system built when I was younger - SamyPesse/devos

    2013 · github.com · its alternatives →

  3. 3IM

    I've wanted to make my own OS since I started programming. Now, 5 years later, I did it (kind of). Sure, it is really basic, has very little functionality, but I made it and I'm proud of that. Oh, and I'm just 16 btw.

    2025 · jotalea.com.ar · its alternatives →

  4. 4

    Run KolibriOS, Linux or Windows 98 in your browser

    2013 · copy.sh · its alternatives →

  5. 5

    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 →

  6. 6

    A simple way to write standalone C programs for i386 - luke8086/boot2c

    2019 · github.com · its alternatives →

  7. 7

    Bootstrapping a Forth interpreter from hand-written tiny ELF binary. Just for fun. - GitHub - nineties/planckforth: Bootstrapping a Forth interpreter from hand-written tiny ELF binary. Just for fun.

    2021 · github.com · its alternatives →

  8. 8

    Finally got my hobby OS up and running on real hardware. I love the old IBM thinkpads, so thought it was the perfect machine to get it working on. Been working on it for quite some time now, but this has been a big milestone!

    2025 · github.com · its alternatives →

  9. 9

    A pretty simple Operating System for my High School Project - aswinmohanme/ultronOS

    2019 · github.com · its alternatives →

  10. 10

    A simple bare-metal forth for the PDP-10. Contribute to aap/tenth development by creating an account on GitHub.

    2015 · github.com · its alternatives →

  11. 11

    This is my operating system that I've been working for the past 2 years. All of the code is written exclusively by me except from ported software. banan-os has a monolithic kernel targeting x86 (i686) and x86_64 architectures. The project consists of bootloader, kernel and userspace libraries (libc, libGUI, libFont, ...). It also uses my custom C++ standard library partly based on stdc++. Currently I have basic TTY and GUI environment with some of the basic UNIX utilities like cp, ls and stat. I have basic support for USB (keyboard/mouse/storage), disks (NVMe, AHCI), custom…

    2024 · github.com · its alternatives →

  12. 12AB
  13. 13
    Sacred OS▲155

    Retro OS in your browser

    2024 · sacred.neocities.org · its alternatives →

  14. 14

    A Simple Unix-like operating system. Contribute to ozkl/soso development by creating an account on GitHub.

    2019 · github.com · its alternatives →

  15. 15

    To try it out, simply build the project yourself from source, or use attached bootable ISO image of the system (in Releases on Github) and run it in QEMU. https://blog.vxn.dev/rou2exos-rusted-edition

    2025 · github.com · its alternatives →

  16. 16

    A multitasking monolithic Kernel based x86 targeting Operating System written in C# from scratch aiming for high-level implementation of drivers in managed environment. - amaneureka/AtomOS

    2017 · github.com · its alternatives →

  17. 17

    I've built many interpreters over the years, and Bolt represents my attempt at building the scripting language I always wanted. This is the first public release, 0.1.0! I've felt like most embedded languages have been moving towards safety and typing over years, with things like Python type hints, the explosive popularity of typescript, and even typing in Luau, which powers one of the largest scripted evironments in the world. Bolt attempts to harness this directly in the lagnauge rather than as a preprocessing step, and reap benefits in terms of both safety and performance. I intend to be…

    2025 · github.com · its alternatives →

  18. 18

    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 →

  19. 19

    Aria is a modern, dynamic scripting language. It is meant to be a "sweet spot" language, easy to pick-up and enjoyable to use. It comes with a familiar C-style syntax, and draws inspiration from a variety of languages. It has a small but usable standard library and strives to be a low-ceremony-get-stuff-done kind of language. It is currently at version 0.9 and I would love feedback as I work towards getting it to 1.0.

    2025 · github.com · its alternatives →

  20. 20

    Hello HN, I've been working on a simple OS for tinkering and running bare metal apps on vintage PCs. Since I couldn't quite decide whether to target pure 16-bit, or slightly more capable 32-bit machines, I ended up with two separate versions: - 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…

    Jun 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →

  21. 21GI

    Hi all! I'm going into my freshman year, and figured that the best way to prepare for the intro to programming Racket course would be to implement my own garbage-collected, dynamically typed, functional programming language in C ;) Anyways... here's the repo: https://github.com/liam-ilan/crumb I started learning C over the summer, so I still have a whole lot to learn... Any feedback would be greatly appreciated! :D

    2023 · its alternatives →

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  23. 23

    A Tiny Basic: An Actually Tiny BASIC for Arduino. Contribute to trevorjay/atinybasic development by creating an account on GitHub.

    2020 · github.com · its alternatives →

  24. 24SA

    Hi HN! Silk is a project I began working on approximately six months ago without any prior experience or knowledge of compiler design, and it's been a frustrating but fun learning experience. It is very much a work in progress, but I would love to hear feedback of any kind!

    2020 · ajaymt.github.io · its alternatives →

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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 →