What Can it Do?

You may be thinking something like “If it’s that small, it can’t possibly be of much actual use.” and if that’s the case, you may be surprised. Included in the tiny ISO you’ll find:

Games (like Pong and Space Invaders clones) Media Player Graphical window environment DOS-like command line Assembler and IDE ZIP file support

There are some other optional utilities at the home page including a (very) light web server and some additional drivers and test packages.

What Can’t it Do?

For starters, network support is VERY limited. Only certain types of ethernet are supported, and no wifi. Partly because of that, there is currently no web browser either. Sadly, multitasking is mostly nonexistent as well, and the custom nature of the OS makes it unable to run existing software from your favorite OS.
Like I said, it’s a toy.

Console-Style Interface

There are two ways of interacting with DexOS graphically, and the first is the custom UI that resembles something you’d find in video games or game consoles. It’s highly simplistic and highly stylized, but lets you access what you need.

Not everything here works, at least not in my testing. To launch applications, you can run the GEX files (similar to DOS’s EXE files. It appears that GUI apps are GEX while console apps are DEX) from the Load Program menus.

Command Line

DexOS also includes a fairly capable command line interface that’s pretty similar to DOS and uses many of the same command like dir and cd (though cd displayed some odd behavior in testing).

As you can see, there are a few applications already available in the base like Pong and Invaders. Just enter the name of the program to run it.

Windowing Interface

You may have noticed WIN.DEX in the list of file in console mode. This opens the windowed desktop with a layout familiar just just about any PC user.

As there’s no real multitasking on DexOS, there’s really very little that can currently be done in this mode. In fact, most of the menu options appear to do nothing at all. This seems to be more of a demo or proof-of-concept than actual intended interface.

Conclusion

You won’t be using DexOS for your main operating system any time soon. There’s little (if anything) it can do that can’t be done better by a “real” OS, however projects like this are an important launching pad for new ideas and new approaches to software. I, for one, would never have expected you could pack as much functionality as this into a system so amazingly small. DexOS might not be the next big thing in desktop operating systems, but it’s a great launching pad for someone who likes to toy with their computer, or perhaps someone who’s just a geek.