Mastodawn

Nina Kalinina 7h ago

So, this weekend I'm playing with Fiwix. Fiwix (https://fiwix.org/) is a small hobbyist operating system for i386 that aims to be Linux 2.0 compatible while being small enough that a single human could understand it as a whole (it's ~30k SLOC, self-hosted, and can be built with tcc).

A couple of years ago Fiwix was used in a fun project of "let's bootstrap a Linux system with only tiny tools that can be understood by a single person": https://github.com/fosslinux/live-bootstrap/blob/master/parts.rst

My refreshed interest in it comes from multiple sources: first, there is now a TCP/IP stack (still WIP). Second, GNU/Linux is *gestures ambiguously* in a strange state, so it is interesting to see how far one could get with a completely non-BSD non-standard tiny, toy-like operating system.

The installation is quite straightforward. "Please keep in mind this kernel is not yet suited for production. Use at your own risk!" is, in itself, a proof of reliability.

This is a beginning of a slow-going🧵

Nina Kalinina 7h ago

FiwixOS comes with quite a few ports, and will require close to 1GB on a disk. I suppose this is because the packages are not particularly optimised in size. The biggest packages beyond the base and GCC are Python3, Perl, ZX Spectrum emulator and Doom/Heretic.

Also, look at this Halt message, so cute!

The system is small, but functional. At the same time, there are quite a few sharp corners, unfinished and untested things.

The list of packages/ports is small, so I want to bring a few things in. Is it going to be easy? Let's find out!

🧵 cont

The first fun challenge is exchanging files with Fiwix. You see, Fiwix only supports ext2 (3?), Minix, and ISO9600 (CD drives).

My daily driver is (still) MacOS, so I cannot just mount the ext2 partition to send files over. I can create an ISO image with the files, but this is a one-way trip. Would be nice to add the support for FAT16/32 disks to Fiwix, right?

Well! First, I simply created a new CD image with mtools-4.0.49.tar.gz. Fiwix recognised the CD, and I was able to unpack mtools archive. Then I ran `configure`, and then edited a few things here and there (mostly mis-configurations in the config file). Then I ran `make`, and few minutes later I got myself a working set of tools to access FAT-formatted disks. Now I can copy files between Fiwix and MacOS, neat.

🧵 cont

Nina Kalinina 6h ago

Fiwix understandably misses a few important tools here and there. Having an emulator capable of running different systems would be nice, right?

Qemu is generally quite portable, but DosBox is smaller, and is good enough for running a large chunk of software I might want to run on my system.

FiwixOS has an SDL1.2 port, so compiling DosBox for it was not difficult at all (a couple of patches are still required). I've thrashed around the video card settings a little bit, until I got it mostly working. I need to figure out why the keyboard is buggy, but I can start Windows under Fiwix, and play a game of solitaire.

So, uh, viva FOSS? Great stuff, hobbyists! It is super duper awesome that I can just get a random toy-like OS, and simply compile the stuff I use regularly for it, and it would work. Extra kudos when the toy OS can boot with as little as 8 megs of RAM. Not gigs, megs.

🧵cont?

Nina Kalinina 1h ago

Thanks to help from the Fiwix devs, I have DosBox fully working (no sound, CD or network support yet). I got a bit upset that there's no windowing interface for the OS (yet), so I ported Bellcore MGR to Fiwix. It's half-baked, but it works.

If you never heard about MGR, it's an X competitor and a terminal multiplexer with graphics.
Here's my post about it: https://www.ninakalinina.com/notes/mgr/

Jarkko Sakkinen 59m ago

@nina_kali_nina Cool. I'm releasing in near future aoUT dos extender with toolchain support for modern gcc and clang. The name comes from the fact that the PM payload is relocatable a.out :-)

As for Dosbox, this is AFAIK the best incarnation of it ATM: https://www.dosbox-staging.org/

DOSBox Staging

DOSBox Staging is a modern continuation of DOSBox with advanced features and current development practices.

Jarkko Sakkinen 53m ago

@nina_kali_nina The inspiration came from when I noticed that people I know who are doing demoscene productions for MS-DOS still use old compilers and really antique tools to generate MS-DOS binaries.

An associated project is to create mxmplay20 of https://www.cubic.org/source/mxmplay-1.6.zip, which is portable implementation of the original and buildable also for Linux (with Pipewire instead of GUS playback routine).

There is a new GUS fork of ao486 that has gained my interested so I guess that it is the main target platform: https://github.com/xolod79/ao486_MiSTer/tree/GUS

Has been nice to hear the awesome sound of Gravis Ultrasound first time in 20 years :-)

Nina Kalinina 50m ago

@jarkko Thanks for sharing! Well, tbh, old compilers produce predictable code :) But it is really neat to have something that isn't GCC 3.3 or OW for DOS.

Jarkko Sakkinen 49m ago

@nina_kali_nina I'll publish the links in this site once I release them: https://jarkkojs.github.io/

Thus, the 486 esque mode 13h fixed point graphics goodness with VGA's rectangular pixels :-)

3AB05486C7752FE1

The Last Psion | Alex 15m ago

@jarkko @nina_kali_nina Hard agree on DOSBox Staging. Much improved over the "vanilla" version.

Nina Kalinina 14m ago

@thelastpsion @jarkko it is going to be much more difficult to port, though. It won't be a two line patch for sure...

@nina_kali_nina Do I read your article to see that the software in the screenshot is from 1984? If so, fascinating to see it even includes the “root weave” X Window System stipple (I did some detective work on this visual design and thought it arrived somewhat later in the 1980s).

Nina Kalinina 53m ago

@matt well, the MGR was created in the early 80s, but this particular distribution is based on a version from Usenet from 1989. It is possible that it was back-ported from X by then

Mind Shambles 53m ago

@nina_kali_nina I find all of your posts fascinating, though I don't understand any of it (like a language I have no idea about) But I love seeing people who are good at fixing things and are great at it (like The Repair Shop on BBC) and you really enjoy the challenge! I feel like a boring dinosaur in a tech world

Nina Kalinina 49m ago

@Aspiedan Thanks, I really appreciate the feedback! If you have any questions, feel free to leave comments with "Explaint to me Like I'm Five" (ELI5) and I'll do my best to explain :)

Mind Shambles 44m ago

@nina_kali_nina I think you would spend more tine explaining than actually working on stuff

blob_cat_innocent

Its nice to have people doing things they enjoy in my feed. Reminds me people are all so different, and thats what makes life beautiful. Art would be boring if artists only used 1 colour or texture (ignoring some modern art here that doesn't fit my analogy)

blob_cat_coffee

David JONES 38m ago

@nina_kali_nina I am mildly curious to know if my nvi fork will work on fiwix. https://git.sr.ht/~drj/nvi2

I might give it a go on Tuesday (if you're not tempted by then).

Nina Kalinina 27m ago

@drj enjoy~ I'll plan to bring more desktop stuff to Fiwix and send a few PRs to the OS as my priority for now

DefaultKevin 36m ago

@nina_kali_nina you utter madwoman. :)

rk: it’s hyphen-minus actually 34m ago

@nina_kali_nina

MGR is *beautiful*. Back in 1996 on a machine with..not very much RAM…MGR was pleasantly usable.

Nina Kalinina 26m ago

@rk I think here on Fiwix it should be useable on a 486 with 8 megs; gotta try it out

rk: it’s hyphen-minus actually 25m ago

@nina_kali_nina

The machine I was thinking of had...either 2MB or 4MB. Good times.

Julius Schwartzenberg - Юліус 32m ago

@nina_kali_nina maybe it would also be possible to get twin going for something with windowing: https://github.com/cosmos72/twin

MGR seems a lot fancier though :)

How is the hardware support of Fiwix? I don't know if DOSBox can do any device pass-through, DOSEMU(2) does have some support for that so you could possibly use hardware that lacks Fiwix drivers but does have DOS drivers.

GitHub - cosmos72/twin: Text mode window environment. A terminal emulator and multiplexer with mouse support, overlapped windows and networked clients. Text-mode equivalent of X11 server + VNC server

Text mode window environment. A terminal emulator and multiplexer with mouse support, overlapped windows and networked clients. Text-mode equivalent of X11 server + VNC server - cosmos72/twin

GitHub

Nina Kalinina 25m ago

@jschwart I think twin should work with minimal changes. Thanks for sharing the link, I'll try it out if I have time

HP van Braam 6h ago

@nina_kali_nina Very neat!

How do the graphics work on fwix? Is this ye olden times Linux 2.x as well? As in, give a root running process access to the VGA and cross your fingers? :)

Nina Kalinina 6h ago

@hp I believe so :) There's no X port just yet. And while there's no X port yet, maybe I should compile MGR for it...

HP van Braam 6h ago

@nina_kali_nina Ohhh, that sounds very fitting!

It might not be that hard to run an older xfree86 vesa server, it also expects to just poke at the VGA directly. It should work, theoretically. I think all it really needs from the os is PCI access and a VT. And I think the VT might be optional?

Nina Kalinina 6h ago

@hp all the necessary parts should be in place, in theory. But having it compiling might not necessarily be trivial for someone who didn't work with old UNIX-like systems day and night in the recent past

HP van Braam 6h ago

@nina_kali_nina maybe I still remember how to do that! I definitely used to install my own x servers from source in the day.

I might be misremembering whether that was or was not a cluster fuck. I'm remembering it as "not that terrible".

I'll see if I can find some time to try! It'd be a fun exercise. If that works maybe...

CDE?

😱

Nina Kalinina 6h ago

@hp ha ha! Maybe:)
I tried to compile tinyx/Kdrive from sources, but even after bringing a bunch of undocumented dependencies it still refuses to compile. And my emulation speed is akin to Pentium MMX 166, so it's not like I'm super interested in rebuilding a bunch of stuff from scratch until I do something about my rig

HP van Braam 6h ago

@nina_kali_nina I'd probably go with Xfree86 pre-driver, and try XVesa.

I seem to recall the only truly exotic thing it wanted was libpciaccess, which may or may not be vendoered in the older monolithic trees.

Nina Kalinina 6h ago

@hp good point! I'll try to install an old Linux and see if I can salvage something from it.

The Penguin of Evil 5h ago

@hp @nina_kali_nina XFree is pretty big and bulky if trying to run a tiny system, the small X server done for the ipaq might be a better basepoint and a lot more easy to use.

Bashing the VGA registers was definitely a Linux 2.0 mistake versus using frame buffer interfaces throughout though.

the esoteric programmer 4h ago

@nina_kali_nina holy shit, this is awesome! sad that it doesn't have tts and a tty screenreader, but O well. Now, an interesting thing would be compiling wlroots or another wayland compositor for that OS. The problem is that most of them require modesetting from linux as well as the drm components, but who knows, maybe it's not too far out of the realms of imagination :p

Nina Kalinina 4h ago

@esoteric_programmer I suspect it might not be that difficult to get a screenreader working for it. It also supports serial TTYs, so it should be possible to login to the system from something that supports tts out of the box

the esoteric programmer 3h ago

@nina_kali_nina espeakup is a kernel module. It doesn't support those, right? maybe telnet?

Nina Kalinina 3h ago

@esoteric_programmer well, it doesn't, yeah. But maybe a similar one can be added!

Jérôme Petazzoni 6h ago

@nina_kali_nina does that mean the TCP/IP stack isn't in a good enough state to transfer stuff over the network? (Either way, using mtools is a neat idea! My first thought would have been to cat some tar files on a block device like a savage 😂)

Nina Kalinina 6h ago

@jpetazzo on the TCP/IP stack: I had to use exactly the same technique to build a new kernel with the TCP/IP support. Afaik there's only PPP/SLIP available at the moment, so that would be a very authentic 1990s experience of exchanging patches between the networked computers.

Nina Kalinina 6h ago

@jpetazzo on tar: I should've thought about that. XD it seems Fiwix uses non-weird tar, so it should have worked. The only danger is to accidentally overwrite your root partition by using wrong block device...

Jérôme Petazzoni 6h ago

@nina_kali_nina the docs say there is serial port support. Here's an opportunity to use xmodem and other protocols 😂 (last time I used that was about 30 years ago with HP calculators I think 🤔) - but it'll probably be slower than block device emulation. Keeping subscribed to your thread though, that looks fun! 🤓