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ZMOS - A small desktop operating system

Hats off to the Zilog Z80 and MOS 6502, experiment and see how usable a FreeBSD based desktop operating system can be with some good small software.

Philosophy and Principle

  • No live CD, no OS installer, just a simple shell script to install required software
  • As less system level customization as possible, the DE experience is limited to single user
  • Balance between usability and disk & memory size, pick as suckless software as possible

Run on VirtualBox/VMWare/Parallels

  1. Adjust screen resolution for XDE:
    1. macOS: Check System Preferences -> Displays -> Display for your screen resolution, it's 1680x1050 by default on MacBook Pro 15-inch screen. If you use different resolution, you need customize XDE/xde.conf by XDE/xde.conf.local, notice the resolution for ZMOS is doubled because Apple Retina display runs "pixel doubled".
  2. Install VirtualBox 6.1.10 or VMWare Fusion 11.5.5
  3. To avoid conflict with X window manager hot keys, change Virtual Machine host key to not use Command or Win, you may use Right_Command + Right_Option.
  4. Create FreeBSD 64bit VM, use UEFI firmware, change machine settings:
    • VirtualBox
      1. System -> Motherboard
        • Base Memory: >= 2048 MB
        • Enable EFI
        • Hardware Clock in UTC Time
      2. System -> Processor
        • Processor: >= 2
        • Enable Nested VT-x/AMD-V
      3. Display -> Screen
        • Video Memory: 128 MB
        • Graphics Controller: VMSVGA
        • Enable 3D Acceleration
    • VMWare Fusion
      1. Processors & Memory
        • Processors: >= 2
        • Memory: >= 2048 MB
        • Enable hypervisor applications in this virtual machine
        • Enable code profiling application in this virtual machine
        • Enable IOMMU in this virtual machine
      2. Keyboard & Mouse
        • select "Mac Profile" because "Profile - Default" has too many conflicts with i3 window manager
      3. Display
        • Enable "Accelerate 3D Graphics", select "Always Use High Performance Graphics" for "Battery life"
        • Enable "Use full resolutions for Retina display"
      4. Isolation
        • Enable Drag and Drop
        • Enable Copy and Paste
      5. Advanced
        • Cancel "Synchronize time" because FreeBSD has ntpd running
        • Enable "Pass power status to VM"
        • Fimware type: UEFI
    • Parallels Desktop
      1. At the last step of creating virtual machine, make sure to select "Customize settings before installation"
      2. In the configuration window:
        • Hardware -> Boot Order: Advanced Settings -> BIOS "EFI 64-bit"
        • Hardware -> CPU & Memory: Processors "2", Memory "2048 MB"
        • Hardware -> Graphics: Memory "512MB(Recommended)", Resolution "More Space"
      3. Parallels Desktop -> Preferences
        • Shortcuts -> macOS System Shortcuts: Send macOS system shortcuts "Always" (so that Ctrl-Space will be sent to FreeBSD)
  5. Install FreeBSD 12.1, create a normal user
  6. Download ZMOS/ to home directory, run commands below: 
    ## as root
./XDE/install-xde.sh
pw groupmod wheel -m YOUR-NON-ROOT-USER  # for VirtualBox clipboard sharing, window scaling
pw groupmod video -m YOUR-NON-ROOT-USER  # access /dev/dri for Xorg 3D acceleration

## as your non-root user
./XDE/user-xde.sh

reboot
  7. After login X session, run fcitx5-configtool and select Rime to enable RIME for Fcitx.