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EtchedPixels
FUZIX
C2014–2026
EtchedPixels / FUZIX · Archived

FUZIX

FuzixOS: Because Small Is Beautiful

26Distinct people
34Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
2.5KGitHub stars
REPOSITORY AT A GLANCE

What to know before exploring

What it is

FuzixOS: Because Small Is Beautiful

GitHub

Where it is used

No documented product use was verified in the last source check.

What people are saying

No recommendation phrase was found in the indexed comments.

No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.

Also in these discussions

No other repository is repeatedly linked in the same discussions.

This week on Hacker News

Nov 8–Nov 15 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/15/2026, 7:02:26 AM UTC.

No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.

Mentions over time

HN mentions by year34 dated mentions

Observed mentions: 2014-10-31 17:15:22 UTC to 2026-04-18 16:10:02 UTC.

02462014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 4 mentions; 0 submissions, 4 comments20142015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 3 mentions; 1 submissions, 2 comments2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 6 mentions; 0 submissions, 6 comments2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 4 mentions; 0 submissions, 4 comments2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 1 submissions, 1 comments2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 4 mentions; 2 submissions, 2 comments2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 0 submissions, 2 comments20202021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 6 mentions; 2 submissions, 4 comments2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 1 submissions, 0 comments2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2027-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments. Incomplete calendar period.2026*

* An incomplete calendar period is marked with an outlined bar. Its count is not directly comparable with a full period.

Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.

View mention counts and date ranges
UTC ranges include their start and exclude their end. Select a period to filter the source evidence.
PeriodStart (UTC)End (exclusive, UTC)MentionsSubmissionsComments
20142014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC404
20152015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC312
20162016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC606
20172017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC404
20182018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC211
20192019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC422
20202020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC202
20212021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC624
20222022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC110
20232023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101
20242024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20252025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
2026 (partial)2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2027-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101

From the project README

An excerpt from the repository, fetched Nov 13, 2026.

Read the project’s introduction
** ENGINEERING WORK IN PROGRESS ** The Z80 side of the tree is currently moving to the new compiler including work on the compiler, linker and kernel. Thus some bits of it require you have absolutely bleeding edge pieces all around. I would suggest avoiding working on this tree for Z80 stuff right now. Non Z80 should be just fine. FuzixOS: Because Small Is Beautiful This is the initial public tree for the FuzixOS project. It is not yet useful although you can build and boot it and run test application code. A lot of work is needed on the utilities and libraries. FUZIX FUZIX is a fusion of various elements from the assorted UZI forks and branches beaten together into some kind of semi-coherent platform and then extended from V7 to somewhere in the SYS3 to SYS5.x world with bits of POSIX thrown in for good measure. Various learnings and tricks from ELKS and from OMU also got blended in Pre-built images Some pre-built filesystems are now available on www.fuzix.org, and other images should follow in time. Supporting Fuzix As this gets asked a bit. The best way to support Fuzix is to contribute code and/or docs. It's really an art project in computing. If you want to spend money then please just buy a homeless person a pizza or a coat or something like that. If you are changing electricity suppliers in the UK to Octopus then signing up through this link gets both of us £50. Not an endorsement, Octopus merely suck less than other UK energy suppliers. https://share.octopus.energy/amber-calf-514 Tools For the 6800, 8080, 8085, Z80 and Z180 the code is now built with the Fuzix C Compiler and Bintools which are also in github. See instructions for building them. Some kernels still need the customised SDCC 3.8 from from this github. 65C816 and Z8 are a work in progress moving to this compiler. 6502 is currently built with cc65 and a distribution version should work. 6303/6803 are built with CC6303 (again in this github) 6809 is built with lwtools and the including gcc fork. Other targets use gcc variants. See the target specific information. What does FUZIX have over UZI Support for multiple processes in banked memory (as per UZI180) but with Minix style chmem and efficient use of bank allocations. Support for multiple processes via hard disk or non mappable RAM drive switching (as per UZI, UZIX). Support for "real" swapping combined with banked memory. Proper sane off_t and lseek Normal dev_t 30 character filenames Proper sane time_t System 5 signals Posix termios (does all the original UZI tty did but much can be added) Blocking on carrier for terminals Optimisations to avoid bogus uarea copying compared to UZI180 More modern system call API: 3 argument open, mkdir, rmdir, rename, chroot (with correct .. semantics), fchdir, fchmod, fchown, fstat, fcntl, setpgrp, sighold and friends, waitpid, setpgrp, nice O_NDELAY, O_CLOEXEC, F_SETFL, F_DUPFD etc Address validation checks on all syscall copies Builds with a modern ANSI C compiler (SDCC) Kernel boots to userspace on 6303, 6502, 65C816, 6800, 68000, 6803, 6809, 68HC11, 8080, 8085, arm32, esp8266, MSP430 (bitrotted) and eZ80/Z80/Z180 Core code can be built for 6303, 6502, 65C816, 68000, 6800, 6803, 6809, 68HC11, 8080, 8085, 8086, arm32, esp8266, MSP430, pdp11, rabbit r2k/r3k and eZ80/Z80/Z180 so should be far more portable Core architecture designed to support building and maintaining multiple target machines without forking each one Helpers to make many bits of implementation wrappers to core code Lots more bugs right now What does UZI have over FUZIX Can run in 64K of RAM (32K kernel/32K user). FUZIX needs banked ROM or similar to pull this off. If you have banked ROM then our kernel footprint in RAM is about 8K plus userspace plus any framebuffers and similar overhead. On a 6809 it's just about possible to run in a straight 64K What do the UZI branches have that FUZIX has not yet integrated Symbolic links (UZIX) Various clever fusions of syscalls that may save a few bytes (UZIX) setprio (UZIX) Rather crude loadable drivers (UZIX) Use of __naked and __asm for Z80 specific bits to avoid more .S files than are needed (UMZIX) Plus OMU has a really clever function passing trick for open/creat and friends, while UMZIX has a neat unified "make anything" function. What Key Features Are Missing Still ptrace, most of ulimit root reserved disk blocks banked executables TCP/IP (in progress) select/poll() (in progress) Support for > 32MB filesystems (but first figure out how to fsck a giant fs on a slow 8bit micro!) Smarter scheduler Optimisations for disk block/inode allocator (2.11BSD) Tool Issues 6809 gcc and cc65 don't have long long 64bit (for sane time_t) None of the above have an O88 style common sequence compressor CC65 can't handle larger objects on stack, and lacks float support We need a 'proper' 65C816 C compiler
Read the full README on GitHub

What Hacker News says

6 sources
There's a more recent version: https://github.com/EtchedPixels/FUZIX/blob/master/Applicatio... I spent some time making it work on modern machines, and it's... I don't really want to use the word 'bad'; because I don't think it is. I kept finding issues which I would spend ages tracing through the code muttering about ancient C which didn't understand alignment and stuff, and then discover that the code was actually doing everything right and the problem was at my end. I couldn't find a single bug in it. But incomprehensible --- oh god yes. The way it handles memory is really bizarre. The parser is really bizarre (there's the famous Tom Duff quote: " Nobody really knows what the Bourne shell’s grammar is. Even examination of the source code is little help."). And then they interact!
In Appropriate Uses for SQLite
See also ELKS, which can run an (extremely stripped down and extensively rewritten) Linux kernel on a 16-bit 8086: http://elks.sourceforge.net/ Also Fuzix, which can run a Unix-like on a variety of tiny, ancient processors like the Z80 and 6809; I've ported it to the MSP430, a modern micontroller, and I also have a half-finished port to the Raspberry Pi that I must get round to fixing one day (hilariously, the Pi has more RAM than Fuzix can handle)... https://github.com/EtchedPixels/FUZIX Both of those run natively, of course.
In Linux on an 8-bit micro? (2012)
A bit back I wrote a Forth interpreter that's a single file containing shell (a tiny bit), awk, C, and (a limited dialect of) Forth. https://github.com/EtchedPixels/FUZIX/blob/master/Applicatio... The awk byte-compiles the initial Forth dictionary into the C file; if you edit the C file, you then run it (as a shell script) and it updates the byte-compiled word definitions. Then you can compile it as a standalone C program. Amazingly, this was actually the simplest way to solve the problem...
In Code that is valid in both PHP and Java, and produces the same output in both
Years ago I wrote a compiler (for bytecode) in awk. Ummm... http://cowlark.com/mercat, although you'll need to wade through zip files to get at the source. It was 1.6kloc for a fully typed algolish language producing stack-based bytecode. awk's a lovely little language, and deserves to be better known than it is. Its two big failings are local variable syntax and absence of structured types... and the standard library's a bit mad in places (gsub, sigh). But it's expressive and concise and still readable, and meets its core competency of doing easy text processing beautifully. The most recent thing I wrote in it was this: https://github.com/EtchedPixels/FUZIX/blob/master/Applicatio... That's a C file which is also an executable shell script which contains an embedded awk script. The whole thing's a Forth interpreter. Running the file uses
Read the rest
the awk script to compile a Forth subset into bytecode and patch the source file with the new bytecode, which allows me to keep the whole thing in a single source file. It's not what I'd call good awk, but it's incredibly effective awk...
In Show HN: 3D shooter in your terminal using raycasting in Awk

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