Applications

The full set of apps runs on the desktop: everyday tools, creative apps, games and a 3D runner. Launch any of them from the Start menu or a desktop icon.

The Editor: real word processing

The Editor is a WordPad-class rich-text word processor. Select text and make it bold, italic or underlined; mix four typefaces and eight sizes in one document; set each paragraph left, centred or right. The document word-wraps to the window and everything is on the menu bar, the toolbar, or a shortcut (Ctrl+B/I/U, Ctrl+S/O/N, Ctrl+A, Ctrl+X/C/V). There's find & replace, a ruler, and a status bar with the cursor position.

Editor: menu bar, toolbar (faces, sizes, B/I/U, alignment), ruler, word-wrapped document and status bar. — **Editor**: menu bar, toolbar (faces, sizes, B/I/U, alignment), ruler, word-wrapped document and status bar.

Rich text for real: the whole document selected and set bold from the keyboard.

Documents save through the Open / Save As dialog to any writable volume: the styled UWD format keeps the formatting, or name a file .TXT to save plain text.

Files: a real file manager

Files shows every mounted volume: the built-in RAM disk, the UnoDOS disk and any FAT-formatted sticks or drives. Browse into folders (Enter opens, Backspace goes up) and use the toolbar for real operations: new folder, rename, delete (it asks twice), copy and move. The Two panes button switches to a classic two-pane commander layout: copy and move then target the other pane's folder.

Files: volumes, folders and files with sizes, and a toolbar of real file operations. — **Files**: volumes, folders and files with sizes, and a toolbar of real file operations.

The two-pane layout: the active pane's header is highlighted; Copy/Move target the other pane. — The **two-pane** layout: the active pane's header is highlighted; Copy/Move target the other pane.

Everyday apps

System: device information in one scrolling list, under headings - Timing, Input & USB, Storage, Network, Power & ACPI and Audio. Storage names the native driver that has taken over (DETACHED (native): ahci0 / nvme0 / emmc0), and Audio names the backend the sound reaches (HD Audio, AC'97, or the PC speaker). Scroll the list to reach the readouts below the fold. — **System**: device information in one scrolling list, under headings - Timing, Input & USB, Storage, Network, Power & ACPI and Audio. Storage names the native driver that has taken over (*DETACHED (native): ahci0 / nvme0 / emmc0*), and Audio names the backend the sound reaches (*HD Audio*, *AC'97*, or the PC speaker). Scroll the list to reach the readouts below the fold.

Clock: an analog face beside a world map showing the day/night terminator, with world times for twenty cities. — **Clock**: an analog face beside a world map showing the day/night terminator, with world times for twenty cities.

Creative tools

Paint: pencil, shapes, fills and a colour palette. — **Paint**: pencil, shapes, fills and a colour palette.

Tracker: a 4-channel pattern sequencer. — **Tracker**: a 4-channel pattern sequencer.

Music: plays WAV, MIDI and MP3 files from disk, plus the built-in tunes. — **Music**: plays WAV, MIDI and MP3 files from disk, plus the built-in tunes.

UnoAmp is a second music player in the Winamp 2 mould, for when you want more than Play and Stop: a playlist, a ten-band graphic equaliser and a visualiser.

UnoAmp as it opens, in its built-in look: a dark chassis with lit displays for the time, the track title and the visualiser. Drop a real Winamp .wsz skin file on the machine and it will wear that instead. — **UnoAmp** as it opens, in its built-in look: a dark chassis with lit displays for the time, the track title and the visualiser. Drop a real Winamp `.wsz` skin file on the machine and it will wear that instead.

The games, Music and Tracker all make sound - through the machine's HD Audio or AC'97 audio hardware on modern PCs (which have no PC speaker), with the classic PC-speaker beep as the fallback on machines that still have one. The Control Panel's Volume slider sets the level.

UnoOffice: word processor, spreadsheet, slides

Three more apps - UnoWord, UnoCalc and UnoShow - make up UnoOffice, and they read and write the real .doc, .xls and .ppt formats. They have a page of their own: UnoOffice.

UnoWord, the word processor. — **UnoWord**, the word processor.

UnoCalc, the spreadsheet. — **UnoCalc**, the spreadsheet.

UnoShow, the presentation designer. — **UnoShow**, the presentation designer.

Photos: an image viewer

Photos opens image files from any disk and steps through the rest of the folder with ←/→. It decodes a wide range of formats itself, through the built-in unomedia library and with no plug-ins: PNG, baseline JPEG, animated GIF, BMP, TGA, QOI, ICO and PNM. Large images are scaled to fit the window, and animated GIFs play. (Progressive JPEG and WebP are recognised but not decoded.)

Games

The classic games each run in their own window; Runner3D takes the whole screen. Esc quits it and puts you back on the desktop, at the resolution you were using before - it does not leave the game running in a window, because it paints straight to the screen rather than into a window.

Dostris: the falling-block game, with score, lines and level. It plays Korobeiniki underneath and blips when you clear a line. — **Dostris**: the falling-block game, with score, lines and level. It plays Korobeiniki underneath and blips when you clear a line.

Pac-Man: maze, dots, power pellets and ghosts, with score, high score, lives and level in the panel beside the maze. A siren loops under the play and speeds up while the ghosts are frightened. — **Pac-Man**: maze, dots, power pellets and ghosts, with score, high score, lives and level in the panel beside the maze. A siren loops under the play and speeds up while the ghosts are frightened.

OutLast: an arcade driving game, with its own theme and a thud when you crash. — **OutLast**: an arcade driving game, with its own theme and a thud when you crash.

Runner3D: a real-time 3D game. — **Runner3D**: a real-time 3D game.

3D graphicsRunner3D draws real-time 3D graphics entirely in software, so it needs no graphics card.

SoundThe games make sound through the machine's own sound hardware, so they need a working sound device - the same one the music player uses. On a machine with no sound device at all they play in silence rather than refusing to start.

Duum

Duum is a Doom engine, written in Python, running on the machine's own Python runtime. It plays Knee-Deep in the Dead end to end: textured walls, floors and sky, monsters that see you, chase you and shoot back, weapons, doors, lifts, switches, teleporters, keycards, pickups, exploding barrels, the status bar along the bottom, and level-to-level progression. Move with the arrow keys, turn with left and right, strafe with , and ., fire with F, open doors with Space, and pick a weapon with 1 to 6. Esc pauses the game and opens its menu.

The same level after walking forward and turning - textured walls, floors and sky, all rendered by Python code running on the operating system's own runtime.

It sounds like the game, too

Duum plays the WAD's own audio, with nothing to set up: the effects come out of the same file the levels do, and so does the music. The effects are mixed on top of the score rather than instead of it, so firing does not cut the music off. On a machine with no sound hardware at all, Duum falls back to the single note each event has always made rather than going quiet.

The pause menu

Esc pauses and opens a menu: Resume, and Options with an FPS counter and a Controls screen. Controls lists what every action is bound to and lets you change it - and the list is the machine's own key table rather than a picture of one, so it always tells the truth about your keyboard. Arrows move, Enter chooses, and Esc backs out one screen at a time.

Duum is on the desktop and in the Start menu under its own reticle icon, the same as any other app. It also sits on the disk as APPS\DUUM.UNO, so opening that file in Files starts it too.

Duum needs a game file

Doom's levels, textures and sounds live in a data file called an IWAD, and it is separate from the engine. UnoDOS ships with Freedoom, a free, from-scratch, Doom-compatible IWAD, so Duum plays out of the box. If you own Doom you can use your own data instead, and it will look and play like the game you remember.

Find your DOOM1.WAD (or DOOM.WAD from the registered game, or freedoom1.wad from freedoom.github.io).
Rename it to DOOM1.WAD if it is not called that already.
Copy it into the top level of the UnoDOS disk - the same place the APPS folder lives - replacing the one that is there.
Start Duum. It reads the file straight off the disk as it plays.

Big files are fineDuum reads the WAD a piece at a time rather than loading it into memory, so a large one is fine on a small machine. If the file is missing or is not a Doom IWAD, Duum opens and tells you so instead of failing.

Whose data is whoseGame data belongs to whoever made it. Freedoom is included because its licence allows it to be given away with other software; the id Software WADs are yours to use but not ours to ship, so bring your own copy.

Studio: make your own apps

UnoDOS comes with its own IDE. Studio is a code editor, a compiler and an AI assistant in one window: write an app in UnoC or Python, press Ctrl+B to build it and Ctrl+R to run it, all on the machine, with no PC or toolchain. The full story, including the built-in ChatGPT / Claude / Gemini assistant, is on the Studio page.

Studio: the built-in IDE - a syntax-highlighting editor, a project list, and a compiler that turns your code into a runnable app right on the machine. — **Studio**: the built-in IDE - a syntax-highlighting editor, a project list, and a compiler that turns your code into a runnable app right on the machine.

UnoCode: the bigger editor

Beside Studio there is UnoCode, a full workbench in the shape of Visual Studio Code: an activity bar and side bar, tabbed editors with a minimap, a command palette, an integrated terminal, and extensions - colour themes, languages, syntax grammars and snippets that you drop into a folder on the disk. Its themes and settings files are Visual Studio Code's own formats, so a theme written for VS Code works here unchanged. See the UnoCode page - or the developer page if you want to write an extension.

UnoCode: the workbench on first run - the activity bar down the left, the Explorer, a tabbed editor with a minimap, and a status bar showing the position, indentation, encoding, line ending and language. — **UnoCode**: the workbench on first run - the activity bar down the left, the Explorer, a tabbed editor with a minimap, and a status bar showing the position, indentation, encoding, line ending and language.

Appliances: another operating system in a window

Appliances boots a Linux kernel inside a window on the desktop, with a console you can type into. It needs hardware virtualisation and a kernel you supply, and it is the newest and least finished thing here, so it has its own page with the limits spelled out: Appliances.

Apps live on the disk

The games and creative tools are not baked into the system: each one is a small .UNO file in the APPS folder of the UnoDOS disk, loaded the first time you open it. Installing UnoDOS onto a PC copies them along automatically. If an app's file is missing, its window simply says so - nothing crashes. (Studio itself is one of these files, so a build can include or omit it freely.)

Installing an app

Copy a .UNO file into the APPS folder and it becomes an app. It gets a desktop icon, a row in the Start menu, an entry on the taskbar and a window, and nothing has to be told about it: the file carries its own name, icon and category, and the desktop reads them.

You do not have to restart. Press Rescan apps in the Control Panel and anything new in the folder appears; the button tells you how many were found. Restarting works too, and finds them the same way.

Where the file came from is up to youAn app you install is ordinary software from somewhere else. UnoDOS will run it, and running it is your decision - the same one you make when you install anything on any computer.

Making the list yours

Apps are listed the way whoever wrote them suggested, which will not always be what you want. A file called APPS.CFG, beside the apps themselves, is where you say otherwise. Each line names an app and one thing to change about it. It sits in the top level of the disk, next to SHELL.CFG:

name.dostris=Blocks
hide.install=1
pin.uoword=1
cat.paint=3

Rename an app to whatever you call it.
Hide one you never use - it leaves the desktop and the menu, and is still there if you change your mind.
Pin one to the taskbar so it is one click away whether or not it is open.
Recategorise one: 0 System, 1 Network, 2 Tools, 3 Media, 4 Games, 5 Other. This matters if you turn on the Start menu's category headings in the Control Panel; they are off to begin with, and the menu is one flat list.

The name after the dot is the app's own short id, which is what the file it came from calls itself. name., short., hide., pin., cat. and rank. are the whole set.

Where you drag a desktop icon to is remembered as well, along with each app's window size and position, so the desktop you arrange is the desktop you get back after a restart.