What is ELKS?

ELKS is a project providing an early fork of the Linux OS for systems based on the Intel IA16 architecture (16-bit processors: 8086, 8088, 80188, 80186, 80286, NEC V20, V30 and compatibles). Such systems can be ancient computers (IBM-PC XT / AT and clones) as well as more recent SBCs, SoCs, FPGAs, as well as modern 80386+ x86 desktops. ELKS supports networking, graphics, ia16-elf-gcc, OpenWatcom C and its own native C compiler, and installation to HDD using both MINIX and MSDOS FAT filesystems.

Memory requirements

• Stock images require 512k RAM
• ELKS requires 256k RAM to run, 512k to be really useful
• No hardware MMU required
• ROM-based systems can run in 128k RAM

Try ELKS online

You can play with ELKS online thanks to the v86 emulator. Login with "root" and no password. Go to the bin folder and try the different commands available. Try nxtetris. Start the game by pressing "n".

Watch ELKS in action

• Can an IBM PC Portable Run Linux with Ethernet? (thanks The Phintage Collector)
• ELKS 0.9.1 and Nano-X on a 286 (thanks Clean Retro Tech)
• This Floppy Disk is a WEB SERVER (thanks Action Retro)
• ELKS, a 16-bit no-MMU Linux on Amstrad PC 2086 (thanks @pawoswm-arm)
• Booting ELKS on an old 286 MB from 1,44MB floppy (thanks @xrayer)
• Epson PC Portable Q150A / Equity LT (Nec V30 8086 - 1989) (thanks Alejandro)
• ELKS on ESP32 through IBM PC emulator (thanks @fdivitto)

Screenshots

ELKS running on QEMU

Nano-X running on ELKS

Olivetti M24 8086 CPU

ELKS Networking showing netstat and process list

Running ELKS Basic on PC-9801UV21 (NEC V30 CPU)

Running Matrix and vi on multiple consoles

Of course Doom

Telnet to an old BBS

Downloads

A full set of disk images are available for download, for you to try out ELKS: Downloads.

How to build

Full build instructions are here.

Wiki

Help on how to use ELKS, as well as technical tutorials, are available on our Wiki.

Documentation

More information is in the Documentation folder: Index of ELKS Documentation.

Resources

Other projects and resources interesting to ELKS and our programming community:

• 8086 toolchain A full C toolchain capable of running on Linux, macOS and natively on ELKS, featuring C compiler and preprocessor, as86 assembler, ld86 linker, disassembler, make, and a complete C library.
• blink16 A visual 8086 emulator and debugger capable of booting the ELKS kernel for symbolic debugging, as well as an emulator for ELKS executables.
• Size Optimization Tricks A great article from Justine Tunney's blog showing how big things can be done without bloat.
• gcc-ia16 TK Chia's gcc compiler targeted for 8086, maintained and used for the ELKS kernel and all its applications.

More information

Questions? Problems? Patches? Open an issue on the ELKS GitHub project!