How to create bootable GUI programs?

Question

*"for Retro computing purposes only"*

Some programs are directly bootable and have a nice GUI

e.g. Acronis OS Selector and Disk Director (screenshot)

How can they run wihtout underlying OS? Can this be acheived by using a minimal Linux distribution?

goal: the program should run such that it appears independent of the os (e.g you dont have to launch it from the os cmd or desktop)

also the OS should not have increase the size of the program a bit too much

Also I wonder if Qt GUI's can run like this...

Inseminate

Answer 1

The story behind a comprehensive GUI + bootable program is somewhat like this:

• Develop the program in a linux GUI toolkit
• On boot, load a linux kernel (without any desktop environment)
• Hand over the control to the program GUI

more info: Bootable Qt-Linux Application

Inseminate

Answer 2

I suspect that Acronis OS Selector and Disk Director uses their own version of Windows 7.

Yes, you can produce a program that has it's own operating system. You could use a bootable Linux distribution.

Knoppix, to pick one example, is a bootable Linux distribution.

Giant

I think the question is more "how can I achieve the same behaviour as graphical installer used by linux distros" than "can I use a livecd to run a graphical program" – Panek

@Aif: I realize you can't be verbose in a comment, but I don't understand the distinction between your two questions. – Giant

the latter means launching a program from a complete OS rather than some independent-like behaviour – Inseminate

@umar: Ok. I guess. The OS included with your program has to access the disks, graphics cards, and possibly the network (Internet). It doesn't sound like too much less than a Linux kernel to me. – Giant

yes seriously. but google "DOS GUI" and you come up with some interesting ui's – Inseminate

@Umar: Ok. We started with an embedded Windows 7, and now we're talking about DOS emulators. Perhaps you should ask your real question if you want a real answer. – Giant

finally got it - Acronis uses Fox toolkit and linux software acronis.com/support/licensing/index.html – Inseminate