Michael Reed delves into one of the most unusual operating systems he’s ever seen and explores the story behind its creation.

Credit: https://templeos.org

T ZealOS are unusual operating systems that don’t fit into the modern paradigm of how OSes are expected to look or work. Every aspect of the system, from the external user interface to the nitty gritty of how it works on the inside, defies convention.

The man who created TempleOS, Terry A Davis, was affected by serious mental illness problems, and many of his design decisions about the OS were informed by his eccentric views, including his unusual religious beliefs. Throughout his adult life, he had run-ins with the law and had difficulty supporting himself. He often got into spats on online forums and websites. However, he single-handedly created a complete, if unusual, OS worthy of exploration. Sadly, he died in 2018.

There have been attempts to continue the legacy of TempleOS. ZealOS is a modern implementation, and it’s another system that we’re going to look at.

Obtaining and installing

We’ll start our investigation into TempleOS (https:// templeos.org) in the usual way, by obtaining it and installing it. TempleOS is supplied as an ISO that boots to a live environment from which it is possible to install the operating system to a hard disk drive. On launching the ISO, you are given your first taste of the TempleOS aesthetic, which is loud, unconventional and largely text-based. Even at this early stage, things deviate from what you might be used to seeing in an installer, and it takes a minute to orientate yourself and start to navigate the interface.

When you’ve got over the sensory overload, it’s time to choose the installation partition. If you answer in the affirmative when asked if you are installing in a VM, the installation wizard is slightly simplified, but we should warn you, this gives it something of a hair trigger when it comes to the destination partition, so be careful. Other than that, the installation is fairly quick and simple. At the end, you remove the installation media and accept the option to reboot, and the actual boot takes only a few seconds.

First boot

The installation procedure of TempleOS should have given you a rough idea of what to expect from the user empleOS and its modernised derivative interface. We recommend saying yes to the offer of a tour. This takes the form of an interactive tutorial, and as TempleOS breaks with so many modern GUI conventions, you’d be unlikely to fully fathom the basics of the interface with experimentation alone. As an aside, interactive in-system tutorials have largely died out these days, having been replaced with video tutorials. You can revisit the help window that leads to these tutorials by pressing F1 at any time.