When I wrote about a modern OS that could run on a floppy disk, I knew I had to try it. Something about going back to the old days when apps could fit within a 1.44MB disk format made me want to give it a try. So, I did what any sane person would do; I tried to get KolibriOS running on modern-day hardware. Except I didn't just want to run KolibriOS, but I wanted to get it running off of a floppy disk.

Meeting the most intense system requirement: a floppy disk drive

Upgrading my PC so it can run KolibriOS

First things first, I had to assemble the hardware. I grabbed a USB floppy disk drive and found someone on eBay who was selling single disks because I really didn't think I'd put a 10-pack of them to good use. Overall, the hardware cost me about $20, so it wasn't too pricey to get my hardware up to KolibriOS's speed.

Once all the hardware arrived in the mail, I got to writing KolibriOS to the disk. I visited the KolibriOS download page and grabbed the floppy image from there. Next, I needed an app that could write the image to the disk, and the internet pointed me toward using WinImage. Strangely, the newest version of WinImage didn't let me write the image to the floppy disk - when I clicked the button, nothing happened. Fortunately, someone on the internet recommended downgrading the app to version 8.50, which did the trick.

Trying to get my PC to boot off of the floppy drive was proving difficult, so I instead grabbed VirtualBox and set up the virtual machine to boot from my real-life floppy drive. If you're following along at home, you can absolutely just take the image from the KolibriOS page, slap it into a digital floppy disk drive in VirtualBox, and dodge all of my hardware madness - but I wanted the real deal.

As you can see in the video above, loading the operating system off of a floppy disk takes a while. I want to say it took around 3-5 minutes for the operating system to read everything it needed from the disk and get itself prepared.

Checking out KolibriOS

Time for the fruits of my labor

Once KolibriOS finished loading, it was time to give it a spin. Immediately, I was greeted with a pretty awesome-looking desktop wallpaper with a few apps strewn around. So I did what any explorer in my position would do - I double-clicked stuff and saw what happened.

Your staple programs are all here. You've got a notepad, a paint app, a calculator, and a basic web browser. On the top-right of the desktop, there are shortcuts for system-based tools, such as a hex editor. And in the lower corners were a colorful array of games to try.

You'd think an operating system as small as this would feel a little laggy to use, but it was actually totally fine. It reminded me of my time using Windows 95, when things were a lot visually simpler in a good way. The games were your standard fare - to name a few, you have Snake, Tetris, Pipe Dream, Pong, and Gomoku, which was like a game of Go except you're solely trying to make a five-in-a-row pattern. They were all simple in design, but they worked perfectly fine and I had a good time with them.

I quickly learned that my Windows creature comforts were not going to save me here. There was no "maximize window" button and pressing CTRL + Z to undo something didn't work. However, for an operating system with a smaller file size than a high-quality photo, I was mighty impressed at how functional it all felt.

KolibriOS is a charming OS that's worth a try on older hardware

Will KolibriOS become my daily driver? Probably not. While the newer operating systems take up a lot more space than KolibriOS, I can't make do with all the new features that come with them. However, I think KolibriOS would be the perfect way to give old hardware new life. We're talking really old hardware; computers that still have a built-in floppy drive instead of having to rely on a USB one.

To KolibriOS's credit, I ran the version with the lowest specs and the least number of features. You can download another version that fits on a CD, and yet another that you can put on a flash drive. I'm sure those versions of KolibriOS are far more capable of keeping up with modern demands and are more feature-rich as a result of the larger file size. However, for an OS you can squeeze onto a single floppy disk, KolibriOS did all that I wanted and more, so that's good enough for me.