# Meet the Operating System of the Future ![[images/Meet-the-Operating-System-of-the-Future.webp]] **Creator:** Renegade Bit **Published:** 2026-10-25 · **Length:** 16:17 **YouTube:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsFENVmWPlc **Official project (from the description):** https://www.kolibrios.org/en/ > **Source note:** Based on YouTube's English auto-generated captions, fetched with youtube-transcript-api after yt-dlp was blocked by YouTube's bot check on this run. Video download was also blocked, so the screenshots come from YouTube's storyboard preview images (320×180, upscaled), and their timestamps are approximate to within about 10 seconds. The captions spell Ville Turjanmaa's name several ways ("Turgeman", "Tormakh"); this note uses Turjanmaa throughout. The FASM author is heard as "Tomas Gristar" and is given here as Tomasz Grysztar. ## Outline ### 0:00 The cost of modern software - [0:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsFENVmWPlc&t=0s) October 2026: the head of Windows says the cost of memory is pushing Microsoft to make Windows 11 use less RAM, and the official priority for the rest of the year is making it run well on 8 GB. "8 GB as an optimization goal." In April, Ubuntu 26.04 raised its minimum memory to 6 GB. - [0:28](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsFENVmWPlc&t=28s) In the same year, there is an operating system that asks for 8 MB: "A thousand times less than what Microsoft now presents as a target." It has a graphical interface, multitasking, a network stack, a browser, a music player, an assembler and dozens of games, boots in seconds, and its base image still fits on a 1.44 MB floppy (1,474,560 bytes). A single phone photo takes more space. ![[images/Meet-the-Operating-System-of-the-Future-t0029.webp]] ![[images/Meet-the-Operating-System-of-the-Future-t0049.webp]] - [1:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsFENVmWPlc&t=60s) It's called KolibriOS, and the video is "not a video about a museum curiosity. It's an indictment." The thesis: "Bloat is not the inevitable price of progress. It's the absence of a limit." He promises a closing calculation "you won't like." ![[images/Meet-the-Operating-System-of-the-Future-t0088.webp]] ### 1:31 The question of software bloat (MenuetOS) - [1:30](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsFENVmWPlc&t=90s) On 16 May 2000, Finnish programmer **Ville Turjanmaa** released the first MenuetOS, a 32-bit OS written entirely in x86 assembly: kernel, GUI, drivers and programs. - [1:55](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsFENVmWPlc&t=115s) In a September 2001 OSNews interview he said he was curious whether it could be done entirely in assembly. On a C interface, it was "mainly a question of principle": C "might solve things in the short run," but he was not sure it would in the long run. - [2:30](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsFENVmWPlc&t=150s) He wanted the distribution and basic functions to stay on one diskette so anyone could try it without partitioning a hard drive. The narrator: the floppy was "a choice of accessibility, and, as we'll see, it will become a contract." ![[images/Meet-the-Operating-System-of-the-Future-t0098.webp]] ![[images/Meet-the-Operating-System-of-the-Future-t0128.webp]] - [2:50](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsFENVmWPlc&t=170s) Comments under the interview split between praise and dismissal: compilers beat humans, assembly can't be maintained, it isn't portable. "These are the same arguments you'll still hear today. And some of them are even true." - [3:05](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsFENVmWPlc&t=185s) Menuet grows: GPL in early 2001; by 2002 the kernel compiles inside Menuet itself with FASM, the flat assembler by Tomasz Grysztar; then TCP/IP, a small web server, an MP3 server, an IRC client. A mostly Russian-speaking community forms around the open code. ![[images/Meet-the-Operating-System-of-the-Future-t0177.webp]] ### 3:30 Birth of KolibriOS and the split - [3:35](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsFENVmWPlc&t=215s) In 2004 the Russian version of Menuet had driver problems. On 28 August a developer signing as **Mario79 (Marat Zakiyanov)** released a fixed version. "It was supposed to be a patch. It's the birth certificate of Kolibri OS." Kolibri is the Slavic word for hummingbird. ![[images/Meet-the-Operating-System-of-the-Future-t0226.webp]] - [4:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsFENVmWPlc&t=240s) In June 2005 Turjanmaa released the first 64-bit Menuet, but closed: free for personal and educational use, no core source, and a clause forbidding disassembly. "A system written in assembly that forbids you from reading its assembly." The GPL 32-bit version was effectively frozen. - [4:35](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsFENVmWPlc&t=275s) Turjanmaa has blamed Kolibri's birth for closing the code, saying his code was taken and stamped with other copyrights. The Kolibri team says the original copyright stayed in place and the inherited Menuet portion keeps shrinking; its readme still thanks Turjanmaa. The dispute was still public on the FASM forums in 2015. The narrator declines to judge it. ![[images/Meet-the-Operating-System-of-the-Future-t0246.webp]] - [5:05](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsFENVmWPlc&t=305s) Menuet still exists (version 1.61 in June 2026, still a floppy image), but it is Turjanmaa's project with a closed core: "You can't study it. You can't fork it." - [5:30](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsFENVmWPlc&t=330s) Kolibri has contributors from Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Moldova, Estonia, Germany and Belgium, plus an experimental exokernel branch, **Kolibri A**, for embedded use on some AMD platforms, which appeared in 2011 in the proceedings of a conference hosted by the University of Exeter. "Closed code preserved a work. Open code created a community." ![[images/Meet-the-Operating-System-of-the-Future-t0315.webp]] ![[images/Meet-the-Operating-System-of-the-Future-t0355.webp]] ### 6:05 Meet KolibriOS - [6:05](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsFENVmWPlc&t=365s) Official minimum requirements: a Pentium-class CPU at 90 MHz (even without MMX), 8 MB RAM, a VGA or VESA card. Your CPU cache alone likely holds more. - [6:20](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsFENVmWPlc&t=380s) What you get: a graphical desktop, preemptive multitasking, TCP/IP, USB 1 and 2, SATA, many file systems (FAT, NTFS, the ext family, XFS, CDs; some read-only), more than 250 programs including a word processor, image viewer, music player, the NetSurf browser, a development environment with FASM built in, and a Unix-like shell. The CD edition adds dozens of games, including shareware Wolfenstein 3D, Doom and Quake. ![[images/Meet-the-Operating-System-of-the-Future-t0404.webp]] ![[images/Meet-the-Operating-System-of-the-Future-t0414.webp]] - [7:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsFENVmWPlc&t=420s) Boot takes a handful of seconds from CD on old hardware (minutes from floppy, "the floppy's fault"). It also boots under UEFI on modern machines alongside Linux from GRUB. - [7:15](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsFENVmWPlc&t=435s) Reviews over 15 years: DistroWatch (2009) found it tidy with patchy documentation; TechRadar (2009) "tremendously impressive"; Dedoimedo (2012) warned readers not to look away from its short boot video; XDA (2024) "charming." "We're amazed because we've forgotten that a computer can be this fast." - [7:55](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsFENVmWPlc&t=475s) The secret: kernel and most drivers in FASM, no chasing POSIX, no library-on-framework-on-library stack, its own APIs. "Every layer that isn't there is memory you don't use, time you don't waste, bugs you don't write." ![[images/Meet-the-Operating-System-of-the-Future-t0483.webp]] ### 8:27 Still version 0.7.7.0 - [8:27](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsFENVmWPlc&t=507s) The last numbered release is 0.7.7.0, from 13 December 2009 (ironically including an ATI driver ported from Linux). Since then, almost 17 years without a new number, yet steady work: a BSD-socket-compatible network stack, ext2 write support, a priority scheduler, UEFI boot, thousands of revisions, and a move from SVN to Git in 2024. 2026 builds are still "0.7.7.0 plus a revision number." ![[images/Meet-the-Operating-System-of-the-Future-t0513.webp]] - [9:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsFENVmWPlc&t=540s) "It doesn't do releases to make the news... It compiles, fixes, adds, and stays small." - [9:25](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsFENVmWPlc&t=565s) Honesty check: counting lines across the whole repository, including ported programs, C beats assembly, about 71% to about 12%. The browser and many libraries are C. "Kolibri is not a temple of purity." But the base image still fits in 1.44 MB (about 1.3 compressed today). "The secret isn't the language, it's the limit." ![[images/Meet-the-Operating-System-of-the-Future-t0572.webp]] ### 10:07 The limits of KolibriOS - [10:05](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsFENVmWPlc&t=605s) Where the critics are right: 32-bit x86 only (no ARM, no 64-bit); one user with 16 GB of RAM reported the system saw about 1.5 GB; limited hardware drivers; NetSurf barely handles the JavaScript-heavy modern web. - [10:30](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsFENVmWPlc&t=630s) Assembly has a real cost: in 2007 a programmer called Menuet's main kernel file "120 KB of extremely hard to maintain code." Writing everything in assembly ties you to one architecture and makes every feature expensive in human effort. ![[images/Meet-the-Operating-System-of-the-Future-t0611.webp]] - [10:50](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsFENVmWPlc&t=650s) So he's not telling you to install it on your work computer or rewrite the world in assembly. Kolibri is "a yardstick, a measuring instrument. It measures the distance between what we need and what we've accepted." ### 11:21 Wirth's law and software bloat - [11:20](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsFENVmWPlc&t=680s) February 1995: **Niklaus Wirth**, creator of Pascal, publishes "A Plea for Lean Software" in IEEE *Computer*. He cites a law he attributes to Martin Reiser: software is getting slower more rapidly than hardware becomes faster, now called Wirth's law. Wirth: "Were it not for a thousand times faster hardware, modern software would be utterly unusable." ![[images/Meet-the-Operating-System-of-the-Future-t0680.webp]] ![[images/Meet-the-Operating-System-of-the-Future-t0690.webp]] - [11:55](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsFENVmWPlc&t=715s) Two causes: hardware growth hides waste, and users can no longer tell the essential from the nice-to-have. "We mistake complexity for sophistication." - [12:05](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsFENVmWPlc&t=725s) Between 1986 and 1989 Wirth and **Jürg Gutknecht** built Oberon to prove it could be done differently. "Lean software doesn't happen by accident. It comes from a constraint chosen on purpose." ### 12:33 Back to 2026 - [12:30](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsFENVmWPlc&t=750s) For 20 years the industry reasoned that developer time is expensive and RAM isn't, so RAM got wasted: web-engine interfaces, apps that are "a browser in disguise," frameworks on frameworks. Each choice was defensible; the sum is "a system that asks for gigabytes to show you a window." - [12:55](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsFENVmWPlc&t=775s) When RAM stopped being cheap, Microsoft "discovers optimization," out of financial necessity. It is targeting the memory manager, compression, WinUI 3 and WebView2: "The bloat they're now trying to cure is the same thing they called modernity for years." ![[images/Meet-the-Operating-System-of-the-Future-t0799.webp]] - [13:20](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsFENVmWPlc&t=800s) Linux sold itself as the lightweight option, but Ubuntu's minimum went from 1 GB (14.04, 2014) to 4 GB (18.04) to 6 GB (26.04), 50% more than the Windows 11 minimum, in the year memory became a luxury. Canonical gave no official reason; followers point to the new GNOME and fatter apps, "None of them, on its own, guilty." - [14:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsFENVmWPlc&t=840s) The calculation: the Ubuntu desktop image is 6.1 GB, more than 4,000 floppies (on screen: about 4,137), to install a system that boots to an empty desktop. "Linux is no longer the lightweight system. It's just the less heavy one," and not because of the kernel. ![[images/Meet-the-Operating-System-of-the-Future-t0819.webp]] ![[images/Meet-the-Operating-System-of-the-Future-t0848.webp]] ### 14:34 What if software had a size limit? - [14:30](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsFENVmWPlc&t=870s) Imagine a distribution that sets a memory ceiling at boot and a size ceiling for the image before writing a line, where every new package must push another out or prove its worth. Kolibri has done that for 20 years with a diskette. Big distributions never have, "because saying no to people who bring features doesn't win applause, and a limit to work has to be uncomfortable." ![[images/Meet-the-Operating-System-of-the-Future-t0878.webp]] - [15:05](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsFENVmWPlc&t=905s) For Kolibri, "the floppy... works like a constitution, a limit written before the code that nobody can ignore. Every new feature has to earn its space. Every byte has to have a reason." It is the spirit of Turjanmaa in 2001 and the discipline Wirth asked for in 1995: "The industry didn't listen. A group of developers scattered between Russia and Belgium did." ![[images/Meet-the-Operating-System-of-the-Future-t0907.webp]] - [15:45](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsFENVmWPlc&t=945s) Closing: "Bloat isn't the price of progress. It's the price of never deciding where to stop." As long as someone keeps compiling an OS that asks for 8 MB, "nobody can tell you again that 6 GB were inevitable. They were a choice." ![[images/Meet-the-Operating-System-of-the-Future-t0957.webp]] ## Things mentioned **Books:** none named in the video. (Wirth's "A Plea for Lean Software" is a 1995 magazine article, not a book.) **Operating systems and projects** - KolibriOS (and its experimental exokernel branch Kolibri A) - MenuetOS (32-bit GPL version; closed-core 64-bit version, 1.61 in June 2026) - Windows 11 (memory manager, compression, WinUI 3, WebView2) - Ubuntu 14.04, 18.04 and 26.04; GNOME; Linux; GRUB; UEFI - Oberon (Wirth and Gutknecht, 1986–1989) **Software and tools** - FASM, the flat assembler (Tomasz Grysztar) - NetSurf browser - Wolfenstein 3D, Doom and Quake (shareware versions) - SVN and Git; POSIX; BSD sockets; TCP/IP **Publications and sites** - Niklaus Wirth, "A Plea for Lean Software," IEEE *Computer*, February 1995 - OSNews interview with Ville Turjanmaa (September 2001) - Reviews from DistroWatch (2009), TechRadar (2009), Dedoimedo (2012), XDA (2024) - FASM forums; University of Exeter conference proceedings (2011) - kolibrios.org **Concepts** - Wirth's law (attributed by Wirth to Martin Reiser) - Software bloat; self-imposed size limits ## Claims check | Claim | Assessment | |---|---| | Microsoft's Windows chief said memory costs are pushing Windows 11 to use less RAM, with 8 GB optimization an official priority for the rest of 2026 | **Accurate.** Windows Latest (2026-10-04) quotes Pavan Davuluri on "the rising cost of memory" and reports Microsoft listed "Memory optimization for 8GB and above" as a focus area on July 31; the memory manager, compression, WinUI 3 and WebView2 are named. Microsoft's Windows Experience Blog followed on 2026-11-03 with 8 GB improvements. | | Ubuntu 26.04 raised its minimum RAM to 6 GB; 14.04 asked 1 GB and 18.04 asked 4 GB | **Accurate.** The 26.04 LTS release notes list a 6 GB minimum; OMG! Ubuntu's table gives 1 GB for 14.04 and 4 GB for 18.04. Canonical gave no official reason, as the video says. | | 6 GB is 50% more than the Windows 11 minimum | **Accurate.** Windows 11's minimum is 4 GB. | | The Ubuntu desktop image is 6.1 GB | **Roughly right.** Ubuntu's download page lists the 26.04.1 LTS amd64 image as 5.9 GB on 2026-11-09; the video's figure may refer to an earlier image or a different unit. | | MenuetOS first released 16 May 2000, all in x86 assembly; KolibriOS forked from it in 2004 | **Consistent** with widely published project history. Not independently re-checked this run. | | KolibriOS needs 8 MB RAM and its base image fits on a 1.44 MB floppy | **Consistent** with the project's own description (kolibrios.org); not re-checked this run. | | Last numbered release 0.7.7.0 on 13 December 2009 | **Plausible**; shown on screen as a release page dated 13/12/2009. Not independently checked. | | The repository is about 71% C and 12% assembly | **Not verified** here; it is the creator's count shown on screen. | | Wirth published "A Plea for Lean Software" in IEEE Computer, February 1995, citing Reiser | **Accurate**, and the quoted "thousand times faster hardware" line is from that article. | | Oberon was built by Wirth and Gutknecht, 1986–1989 | **Broadly accurate**; the Oberon project ran in the late 1980s at ETH Zurich. | ## Biographies **Renegade Bit** is the YouTube channel (about 35,600 subscribers at capture) behind this video; the narrator is not named in the video. The sign-off, "may Linux be with you," and the line "this channel doesn't sell fairy tales" suggest a Linux-focused, opinionated computing channel. **Ville Turjanmaa** is the Finnish programmer who created MenuetOS in 2000 and still develops its closed-core 64-bit version, per the video. **Marat Zakiyanov ("Mario79")** is the developer whose August 2004 fix to the Russian Menuet build became the start of KolibriOS, per the video. **Tomasz Grysztar** is the author of FASM, the flat assembler used to build Menuet and Kolibri. **Niklaus Wirth** (1934–2024) was a Swiss computer scientist, creator of Pascal, Modula-2 and Oberon, Turing Award winner (1984), and author of "A Plea for Lean Software" (1995). **Jürg Gutknecht** is the ETH Zurich computer scientist who co-designed the Oberon system with Wirth. ## Tutorial Not applicable: this is not AI-tool content. ## Related - [[Renegade Bit]] channel table of contents