DBOS — Daniel's Boring OS

A small Linux for old 32-bit PCs. Boots in a few seconds, fits in 13 MB of ISO, and gives you a working terminal with the tools you actually want — no graphical desktop, no surprises, nothing flashy.

What it's for

If you have an old laptop or PC sitting in a drawer (think: Pentium M, Core Duo, an early Atom netbook), DBOS will boot on it and turn it into a usable little machine. You get a shell, an editor, network tools, and a web browser — over SSH if you'd rather work from your main computer.

It's deliberately boring: nothing auto-updates, nothing phones home, nothing tries to be clever. The whole system is one ISO; if it breaks, you re-flash.

Quick start

1. Grab the ISO: dbos-pentium-m-0.1.0-alpha.iso.
2. Burn it to a USB stick (e.g. with dd, BalenaEtcher, or Rufus) or write it to a CD.
3. Boot the target machine from that media.
4. Pick "Boot DBOS — live (in RAM)" at the menu (or wait 3 seconds).
5. Log in.

Login

user	password
root	dbos
dbos	dbos

Change these. Run passwd once you're in. (No, there's no graphical config tool. This is on purpose.)

Trying it without a real machine

If you just want to look around without finding old hardware, run it in QEMU on any modern Linux:

qemu-system-i386 -cpu coreduo -m 512 -cdrom dbos-pentium-m-0.1.0-alpha.iso

What's inside

When you log in you land in mksh, a small shell with arrow-key history and tab completion. You'll find:

• nano — friendly text editor.
• less — pager (use with man, big logs, etc.).
• htop — colorful process viewer.
• mandoc + man — read manual pages, e.g. man less.
• curl — download things; supports HTTPS.
• lynx — text-mode web browser.
• dropbear — SSH server (already running) and client.
• toybox — provides hundreds of standard Unix commands as one binary (ls, cp, grep, awk, vi, ping, wget, …).

Networking comes up automatically via DHCP. If you need a static IP, edit /etc/network (the file is short and self-explanatory).

To find out what's installed and where files come from:

dbos-pkg list                 # all packages with versions
dbos-pkg owns /usr/bin/curl   # which package owns this file
dbos-pkg info curl            # version + runtime dependencies

SSH-ing in

DBOS runs dropbear as its SSH server. After it boots, look at the welcome screen — it tells you the IP address it picked up (or check with ifconfig). From your other computer:

ssh root@<IP>          # password "dbos" until you change it

The first time you connect you'll be asked to trust the server's fingerprint, as usual.

Tips

• The login screen shows kernel version, IP, free memory and disk usage. If you want to see it again later, run cat /etc/motd.
• ls and grep are colorized. ll is a shortcut for ls -lh.
• Up arrow recalls history. Ctrl-R searches it.
• The system runs entirely in RAM by default ("live mode"), so any file you create is gone after you reboot. To persist data, mount a USB stick or a hard-drive partition with mount.
• Want to switch to a real vi? Use vi (toybox provides it). For a fuller editor, use nano.
• Power off cleanly with poweroff — DBOS handles ACPI shutdown.

Versioning

cat /etc/dbos-release tells you which version you're running. The file format follows the same conventions as /etc/os-release on other Linux systems.

Trouble?

• Nothing boots: make sure the BIOS is actually trying the USB stick first. Some old machines need a magic key (F12 / F8 / Esc) at startup to pick the boot device.
• Wrong CPU: there are profiles for slightly different vintages (ancient, pentium-m, core-duo). Pick the closest match.
• No network: confirm the cable / Wi-Fi (Wi-Fi is generally not supported in this alpha — wired only). Check ifconfig for an address. If DHCP is silent, edit /etc/network and set a static config.

Documentation

• Manual pages: man <name> for any installed program.
• This README is for users. If you want to build DBOS from source, customize a profile, add a new program, or contribute, read CLAUDE.md. It's the developer documentation.
• AI usage policy for contributors: docs/AI-USAGE.md.

Status

DBOS is at 0.1.0-alpha as of 2026-05-03. That means: it boots, the basic tools work, the build system is documented, but a lot of the polish you'd expect from a "1.0" hasn't happened yet. Use it for fun and toy machines; don't run a business off of it.

License

DBOS itself (the build system, profiles, recipes, and /usr/bin/dbos-pkg) is GPL-2.0-only — same license as the Linux kernel. See LICENSE.

The software DBOS bundles into the rootfs (toybox, mksh, dropbear, lynx, nano, less, htop, mandoc, curl, mbedTLS, ncurses, zlib, the kernel, musl) keeps its own upstream license; DBOS just packages each component unmodified. dbos-pkg list shows what's installed.