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On Thu, 3 Aug 2006, Chuck Guzis wrote: They could only get away with that because of the supported hardware: Hardware requirements: * 386 or better. * 8 megs of ram. * Hardware / RS232 modem (not a winmodem) or NE1000/2000, DEC 21x4x, or 3com 509 based network card. * Serial or PS/2 mouse. * VGA or Vesa 2.0 compatible card. * No hard disk needed That must be the simplest set of x86 hardware that you can write a networked, protected VM OS on; all long-lived, well-defined interfaces, and only one set. No disk drivers even :-) Could you fit into such a small footprint with their stock kernel? I doubt it; I think this was a special build. Then there's their entirely in-house userland. Could you fit a variety of things written by different groups? Again, I doubt it; code would be duplicated, and it would be hard to remove everything non-essential without removing something essential attached to it. I don't hate QNX, but for some reason this demo has always irked me; I don't feel it's fair to compare a nifty trick to a complete minimal system. If you want to do something practical on x86, you'll need a lot more than one floppy. Today's debian installer needs 2 1.44 floppies of drivers on top of the most common ones built into the kernel (which lives on its own 1.44 floppy). Alexey