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Dev tools · alternatives · 2026

24 alternatives to OSle – A 510 bytes OS in x86 assembly

(sorry about double posting, I forgot to put Show HN in front in the original https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43863689 thread) Hey all, As a follow up to my relatively successful series in x86 Assembly of last year[1], I started making an OS that fits in a boot sector. I am purposefully not doing chain loading or multi-stage to see how much I can squeeze out of 510bytes. It comes with a file system, a shell, and a simple process management. Enough to write non-trivial guest applications, like a text editor and even some games. It's a lot of fun! It comes with an SDK and…

OSle is a fully functional operating system written in x86 assembly that fits entirely within 510 bytes of a boot sector. It includes a file system, shell, and process management, allowing developers to create… 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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  2. 2

    Hi everyone, I built PyXL — a hardware processor that executes a custom assembly generated from Python programs, without using a traditional interpreter or virtual machine. It compiles Python -> CPython Bytecode -> Instruction set designed for direct hardware execution. I’m sharing an early benchmark: a GPIO test where PyXL achieves a 480ns round-trip toggle — compared to 14-25 micro seconds on a MicroPython Pyboard - even though PyXL runs at a lower clock (100MHz vs. 168MHz). The design is stack-based, fully pipelined, and preserves Python's dynamic typing without static type restrictions.…

    2025 · runpyxl.com · its alternatives →

  3. 3

    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 →

  4. 4IM

    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 →

  5. 5

    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 →

  6. 6

    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 →

  7. 7

    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 →

  8. 8

    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 →

  9. 9

    Hi HN, I’m Dvir, a young developer. Last year, I got rejected after a job interview because I lacked some CPU knowledge. After that, I decided to deepen my understanding in the low level world and learn how things work under the hood. I decided to try and create an OS in C and ASM as a way to broaden my knowledge in this area. This took me on the most interesting ride, where I’ve learned about OS theory and low level programming on a whole new level. I’ve spent hours upon hours, blood and tears, reading different OS theory blogs, learning low level concepts, debugging, testing and working on…

    Oct 2025 · github.com · its alternatives →

  10. 10
    ByteNite▲206

    Hi HN, I’m one of the creators of ByteNite (https://bytenite.com). We built it for developers running compute-heavy containerized workloads (AI, ETL, batch jobs) who are frustrated with the limitations of traditional serverless platforms: timeouts, cold starts, orchestration complexity, and limited runtime control. ByteNite is a serverless platform that lets you submit distributed jobs packaged as Docker containers. You define simple or complex fan-out/fan-in logic, set your hardware requirements, and we handle the rest—distributing execution across warm cloud runners (CPUs,…

    2025 · docs.bytenite.com · its alternatives →

  11. 11

    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 →

  12. 12

    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 →

  13. 13

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

    2019 · github.com · its alternatives →

  14. 14

    Battery info program for x86-64 Linux laptops in 307 bytes of machine code - meribold/btry

    2024 · github.com · its alternatives →

  15. 15

    Userspace macOS translation layer for Linux ARM64. Contribute to wie-project/kakehashi development by creating an account on GitHub.

    Aug 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →

  16. 16

    A fast, rootless sandbox and virtual resource runtime for any workload, including untrusted and AI-generated code. Daemonless: a real, kernel-enforced container in ~3.5 ms from an OCI image, out of one static binary - getkern/kern

    Aug 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →

  17. 17

    This is ymawky, a static file web server for MacOS written entirely in ARM64 assembly. It supports GET, PUT, DELETE, HEAD, and OPTIONS requests, and supports Range: bytes=X-Y headers (which allows scrubbing for video streaming). It decodes percent-encoded URLs, strictly enforces docroot, serves custom error pages for any HTTP error response, supports directory listing, and has (some) mitigations against slowloris-like attacks. I’ve also written a more detailed writeup here: https://imtomt.github.io/ymawky/

    May 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →

  18. 18

    Micro Kernel / Bootloader for Ben Eater's 6502 Computer - janroesner/sixty5o2

    2020 · github.com · its alternatives →

  19. 19

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

    2019 · github.com · its alternatives →

  20. 20

    Yes, this includes the MBR and partition boot sector. The partition table is modeled as a class hierarchy. Second stage loads a kernel from a FAT32 file. I'm normally a C programmer, but for a work project, I recently revisited C++, a language that I had an on-again-off-again relationship over the years. I did this as a fun training exercise on the side to get familiar with the language again, but obsessed a bit and kind of overshot the target. I thought the result might be of interest to someone.

    2023 · github.com · its alternatives →

  21. 21

    Support for bootable OS containers (bootc) and generating disk images - podman-desktop/extension-bootc

    2024 · github.com · its alternatives →

  22. 22

    I pretty much always have a kernel project going on, and have been that way for decades. Over the past couple of years, that's been Anos, which has gotten further along than any of my previous hobby kernels, supporting IPC, multitasking, SMP (x86-64 only right now) and running on real hardware. LLMs (mostly Claude Code) have been used during development, but I learned early on that it's not _great_ at code at this level, so I've restricted its use to mostly documentation and tests. There's _a little_ AI code in the user space, but I have a strict "no AI code" rule in the kernel itself. I…

    Apr 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →

  23. 23

    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 →

  24. 24

    Long-simmering side project that is finally ready to see the light. HAMTs are a cool persistent data structure and implementing one has been a lot of fun. Beyond the code, there is likely some value in the extensive and largely complete implementation docs; basic benchmarks are linked in the README, too. Kind of aiming to be "the libavl for HAMTs". That is obviously a high and aspirational bar but a distinct possibility if it stirs up a little interest and/or contribution. Anyways, it's time for this to go out, collect feedback and maybe even some use outside of toy projects. Let me…

    2023 · github.com · its alternatives →

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