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AlexALX edited this page Aug 20, 2026 · 7 revisions

Usage

This page contains basic ALX OS controls, usage information, and limitations.

Limitations

  • A full PC with an HDD and more than one bank cannot be saved as a single dupe using AdvDupe1 or the GMod duplicator. AdvDupe2 is required.
  • The file system and PC can be very slow without wire_expression2_unlimited or increased tick/soft quota limits.
  • There is no scrolling in the directory listing.
  • There is currently no way to restore a damaged system.

Keyboard Controls

  • F1F8 - actions shown in the footer.
  • / - navigate in Explorer.
  • / - select OK / Cancel in dialogs.
  • Tab or / - switch between text fields in text dialogs.
  • Tab or / - switch between tabs in the CD burner.
  • Delete - remove files or folders.
  • Enter - open a file if an association exists, such as .txt or .bmp.
  • In the CD burner, Enter adds a file to the project. In the second tab, it removes a file from the project.

BIOS Beep Codes

  • 1 long - OK
  • 7 short - BIOS ROM error
  • 1 short with different frequencies - CPU error
  • 1 long, 3 short - GPU error
  • 1 long, 2 short - GPU EGP limits error
  • 2 long - Keyboard error
  • 3 long - no EGP connected
  • 1 very long - Null Byte error
  • 2 short - bad sound card

Supported File Formats

ALX OS currently supports reading the following file formats:

  • JPEG — Baseline, Progressive, and 12-bit JPEG
  • PNG — PNG images with Deflate compression and Adam7 interlacing
  • GIF — GIF images, including animated GIFs
  • BMP — BMP images, including RLE4/RLE8 compression
  • ZIP — ZIP archives using Deflate compression
  • TXT — plain text files
  • INI — text-based configuration files
  • E2E — Expression 2 executable files containing the name of a function to execute
  • E2S — Expression 2 script files containing the name of a function to load

Support is focused on reading, decoding, parsing, and processing files directly within ALX OS. Not all variants or compression methods of a given format are supported.

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