UmVirt ELKS autobuild

ELKS source code packages bundle with automated build script.

Final product is bootable floppy disk image.

What is ELKS

Embeddable Linux Kernel Subset - Linux for 8086

Operating system for 8086, 286, 386, 486, 586, 686.

WWW: https://github.com/ghaerr/elks

Video

• Decorating a console with cool-retro-term & autonomous ELKS compilation in ULFS - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8D1BmBqNDio
• Connecting an old 386/4 RetroPC to QEMU VM with ULFS via ELKS Miniterm - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04oK-BizQLE

Objectives

• proof that ULFS can be used as build environment
• building ELKS in off-line mode
• compilation benchmarking
• testing old hardware and emulators
• education

Downloads

elks-0.8.1

elks-0.8.1-autobuild-2025-08-04.tar [ MD5-checksum ]

elks-0.6.0

elks-0.6.0-autobuild-2023-05-05.tar [ MD5-checksum ]

Building

• Extract archive

• Run build script:

  time ./build