GentleOS: A Hobby OS for Vintage 32-bit PCs With a Retro GUI

GentleOS/32 is a hobbyist operating system built for tinkering with vintage 32-bit hardware. It runs on machines as modest as an i386 with 4MB of RAM and a VGA display in 640x480x16 mode, providing a graphical environment for interactive apps directly on bare metal. The design is deliberately monolithic, configured at compile time, and limited to standard PC peripherals like VGA/SVGA, PS/2 and serial mice, keyboards, and the PC speaker.

The project also includes a 16-bit spin-off, GentleOS/16, which reaches further back to support hardware as old as the 80186. Future development is scoped narrowly to bugfixes, optimizations, and additional apps rather than expanded hardware support. The code ships under GPLv2, with bundled assets drawn from Icons8, the Mona Font, and the Ultimate Oldschool PC Font Pack.