Beacon is an free, open source operating system created by the Turrnut Open Source Organization. The OS source code is distributed under the GPL v3 License.
To build Beacon, you need to either be running Linux, or Windows with WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux).
- If you do not have all dependencies, please run
install-packages.shfirst. - Run
make compile, andos.isowill be in theoutfolder in the current directory. - Burn to bootable media to run on real hardware (Any x86 cpu supporting Protected Mode (technical minimum i386, Pentium-class reccomended), at LEAST 16mb of RAM, and CGA or better Graphics are req'd; IDE HDD reccomended), or virtualize it using tools such as QEMU or VirtualBox.
Example QEMU command:
qemu-system-i386 -cdrom out/os.iso -hda [your image file here] -boot d -serial pty
Important
If a valid FAT32 image file / Hard Disk is not attached, the OS may not boot or throw an error. The drive must also be IDE/PATA, it cannot be SATA/AHCI.
It is also reccomended to use a burned CD/DVD, rather than a USB flash drive if attempting to boot on real hardware.
If you do not have an image file, there is a ZIP file containing an empty (formatted) 1 GB image.
The makefile will automatically attempt to load said image when using make run. If you do not edit the makefile or unzip the image, QEMU will not launch, as it will not be able to find the image.
Note
Hard Disks are officially supported on real hardware, but experimental. Your data may be lost, and we are not liable for any lost data caused by Beacon.
The startup screen.
The Beacon Command Line Interface.
The included games.