BananaOS, vibecoded operating system that boots on a 486 with ~11MB RAM
My 10-year-old son has been deep in low-level rabbit holes lately and ended up vibe-coding his own operating system. Since he’s still a kid and not on HN himself, I’m posting this on his behalf with his permission. This started as curiosity about how computers actually boot, and somehow escalated into writing a kernel, building a GUI, and setting up CI that produces a bootable OS image on every commit. BananaOS is a small experimental operating system built mainly for learning and exploration of low-level systems programming. It currently targets i386 BIOS systems and is designed to run on…
In plain words
BananaOS is an experimental operating system designed to run on minimal hardware, including 486 processors with approximately 11MB of RAM. Built primarily as a learning project in low-level systems programming, it features a custom kernel, VESA graphics with a window manager, and multiboot compliance. The OS targets i386 BIOS systems and generates bootable images through automated continuous integration. It is intended for educational exploration of how computers boot and function at the kernel level.
written from the facts on this page · September 2026
From the sources
In the maker’s words, at launch
My 10-year-old son has been deep in low-level rabbit holes lately and ended up vibe-coding his own operating system. Since he’s still a kid and not on HN himself, I’m posting this on his behalf with his permission. This started as curiosity about how computers actually boot, and somehow escalated into writing a kernel, building a GUI, and setting up CI that produces a bootable OS image on every commit. BananaOS is a small experimental operating system built mainly for learning and exploration of low-level systems programming. It currently targets i386 BIOS systems and is designed to run on extremely constrained hardware. Fun fact: Wallpaper logic, one of the most important OS functionalities, is directly implemented in the kernel. That cracked my son up! Some highlights: Multiboot-compliant kernel loaded via GRUB VESA framebuffer graphics with double buffering Custom window manager with movable and resizable windows Dock-style application launcher PS/2 keyboard and mouse input handling PCI enumeration and AHCI SATA support Basic applications (terminal, notepad, calculator, file explorer, settings) Memory detection and allocation based on available RAM Boots in QEMU with about 11.2 MB RAM Includes an ISR workaround to emulate CMOV so it can boot on Intel 486 CPUs One thing I found particularly fun: he also added GitHub Actions workflows that automatically build the OS image for every commit, so the repo continuously produces fresh bootable artifacts. The project is very much experimental and should only be run inside an Virtual Machine. Repo (with build instructions and screenshots): https://github.com/Banaxi-Tech/BananaOS Quick start (only on Linux, check dependencies, and see README): git clone https://github.com/Banaxi-Tech/BananaOS cd BananaOS make qemu-system-i386 -cdrom bananaos.img -m 128M Retro mode: qemu-system-i386 -cpu 486 -cdrom bananaos.img -m 11.2M He’s mainly building this to understand kernels, memory management, drivers, and how operating systems actually work below user space. Feedback from people who have built hobby operating systems or worked close to hardware would be especially appreciated.
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