To be honest, while KolibriOS is open-source, I wouldn't call it "active" that much. MenuetOS has progressed much further than KolibriOS over the years in both performance (it has SMP support!) and being 64-bit.
I believe I run MenuetOS once over decade years ago. Now it's 26 years old since its first release. I can only be jealous of such stamina and wish it prosperous years ahead.
I remember stumbling uppon Menuet when it was still 32 bits only, (probably around 2006?). I tried it, booting from an actual floppy disk at the time. Nowadays, I don't even know where I would find a computer that still has a floppy disk drive. Time flies.
I remember doing this too, a little bit later. It would churn on the disk for minutes on end, and usually fail. I think I got it to work once or twice.
Floppy disks and drives were plentiful, but scrap in those days. So of course those were the machines I got to play with as a kid at that time. Many of my disks were not in the best condition, or they were some of the post-2000s ones that were low quality to begin with.
I remember people were making various editions of "mini windows" 3.11 on a floppy disk around that time also.
Interview With Ville Turjanmaa, the Creator of MenuetOS (2001) (1)
Ville Turjanmaa: The current distribution fits to a single floppy and I plan to keep the basic OS functions that way.
— Man of his word!
1. https://www.osnews.com/story/93/interview-with-ville-turjanm...
Note that the 64-bit version is not open source.
KolibriOS (https://kolibrios.org/en) is an active fork of the open source 32-bit version.
To be honest, while KolibriOS is open-source, I wouldn't call it "active" that much. MenuetOS has progressed much further than KolibriOS over the years in both performance (it has SMP support!) and being 64-bit.
You can check the commit activity: https://git.kolibrios.org/KolibriOS/kolibrios/commits/branch... - last commit on the first page is already 10 months ago.
And compare it to "News" on the MenuetOS page: - 22.01.2026 M64 1.58.10 released - Improvements, bugfixes, additions
- 26.08.2024 M64 1.53.60 released - MPlayer included to disk image
- 24.07.2024 M64 1.52.00 released - Partial Linux layer (X-Window/Posix/Elf)
- 12.07.2024 M64 1.51.50 released - New graphics designs by Yamen Nasr
- 08.05.2024 M64 1.50.80 released - Fasm-G, many 32 bit apps & sources
I believe I run MenuetOS once over decade years ago. Now it's 26 years old since its first release. I can only be jealous of such stamina and wish it prosperous years ahead.
Has it had any commercial success?
I remember stumbling uppon Menuet when it was still 32 bits only, (probably around 2006?). I tried it, booting from an actual floppy disk at the time. Nowadays, I don't even know where I would find a computer that still has a floppy disk drive. Time flies.
I remember doing this too, a little bit later. It would churn on the disk for minutes on end, and usually fail. I think I got it to work once or twice.
Floppy disks and drives were plentiful, but scrap in those days. So of course those were the machines I got to play with as a kid at that time. Many of my disks were not in the best condition, or they were some of the post-2000s ones that were low quality to begin with.
I remember people were making various editions of "mini windows" 3.11 on a floppy disk around that time also.
A similar project discussed a couple days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46866544