GNU/Fiwix For Linux

GNU/Fiwix is a free, minimal and open source operating system designed exclusively for educational purposes. It is based on the Linux kernel, includes GNU tools and it’s built around the Busybox utility.

The distribution is available for download as a Live CD ISO image that is bootable on both 32-bit and 64-bit computers, as well as an IMG file that can be deployed onto a floppy disk.

The Live CD boot menu is very minimal, it includes a single entry, the ability to boot the live system with the default kernel. However, you can edit it and pass additional parameters to the kernel in case some of your computer’s hardware components are not recognized by default.

GNU/Fiwix is written mostly in the C programming language, it’s fully compliant with the GRUB multiboot specification, features preemptive multitasking and has been designed for Intel 80386 and Pentium processors.

Another interesting feature is that it includes many drivers, supporting RAMdisk devices, parallel port printers, floppy disk devices, IDE/ATA hard disk devices (read only) and IDE/ATA ATAPI CDROM devices.

GNU/Fiwix supports POSIX signals, handles exceptions and interrupts, it’s compatible with Linux 2.0 system calls, supports Linux PROC and EXT2 filesystems, as well as ISO9660 and PIPE pseudo-filesystems.

The distribution has been designed from the offset to work with any standard PC architecture. Minimum requirements for running GNU/Fiwix include at least 3MB of system memory (RAM), a US or ES/CA keyboard, a VGA-capable graphics adapter, a floppy disk drive (if you’re using the IMG file) and a IA-32 and compatible processor.