I remember stumbling uppon Menuet when it was still 32 bits only, (probably around 2006?). I tried it, booting from an actual floppy disk at the time. Nowadays, I don't even know where I would find a computer that still has a floppy disk drive. Time flies.
I believe I run MenuetOS once over decade years ago. Now it's 26 years old since its first release. I can only be jealous of such stamina and wish it prosperous years ahead.
I suppose it's relatively easy to make a compact OS which has barebone hardware capabilities: VGA / VESA framebuffer graphics, SATA, 1-2 NICs, USB2, x64 only. Early versions of Unix were tiny by modern standards. NeXT's GUI worked well on hardware which would be considered a toy today. They all already contained the key features which MenuetOS has. I suppose it's the support of a large number of advanced features (many CPUs, various filesystems, virtual memory + page cache, advanced IP stack, a ton of drivers) that makes a modern Linux kernel large.
I noticed Menuet maybe twenty years ago and I recommended to the forum at the time to put it into a boot manager of some kind, a bit like a backup OS that could read docs and download a file, etc. Don't think they did. Today, I guess it might run from an ESP (efi system partition).
The XP era security was a joke. I used to open notepad, bring up the dialog to open a file, right click on an executable that was "blocked" and run it from there.
I was once using a public library computer that was loaded full of malware despite all of the "security" software, and I asked the library staff if they were okay with me working around it, to could uninstall the malware. I was expecting that they'd defer to some policy only allowing the county IT department to mess with the computers, but instead they were excited that I new how to do so and had no complaints.
On the one hand it is pretty cool that this exists.
On the other hand ... to me it always felt as if I'd waste too much
time writing assembler code. I like being able to express thoughts
and ideas, via code, in a more easily manner, e. g. ruby. Or perhaps
another language that may be even more expressive (and fast at the
same time; I am talking about C-like fastness or even faster, why
can't we combine both?).
I also wonder how adjustable MenuetOS is. It looks as if the default
theming in all those screenshots is quite basic, always fitting to
just one style only. This may be ok in 1980 but I kind of feel that
the world moved on, what with HTML/CSS being so dominating everywhere.
In fact: any aspect of the OS that relates to design, should be easily
adjustable by a user at any moment in time, just as it is with
HTML/CSS (JavaScript I don't care as much for - it is a very poorly
designed programming language after all).
14 comments
[ 2.3 ms ] story [ 34.5 ms ] threadHas it had any commercial success?
KolibriOS (https://kolibrios.org/en) is an active fork of the open source 32-bit version.
Ville Turjanmaa: The current distribution fits to a single floppy and I plan to keep the basic OS functions that way.
— Man of his word!
1. https://www.osnews.com/story/93/interview-with-ville-turjanm...
But this is how you distribute source without accepting contributions! :)
I was once using a public library computer that was loaded full of malware despite all of the "security" software, and I asked the library staff if they were okay with me working around it, to could uninstall the malware. I was expecting that they'd defer to some policy only allowing the county IT department to mess with the computers, but instead they were excited that I new how to do so and had no complaints.
Lots a bloat are caused by inefficient programming, but not all bloat is useless.
On the other hand ... to me it always felt as if I'd waste too much time writing assembler code. I like being able to express thoughts and ideas, via code, in a more easily manner, e. g. ruby. Or perhaps another language that may be even more expressive (and fast at the same time; I am talking about C-like fastness or even faster, why can't we combine both?).
I also wonder how adjustable MenuetOS is. It looks as if the default theming in all those screenshots is quite basic, always fitting to just one style only. This may be ok in 1980 but I kind of feel that the world moved on, what with HTML/CSS being so dominating everywhere. In fact: any aspect of the OS that relates to design, should be easily adjustable by a user at any moment in time, just as it is with HTML/CSS (JavaScript I don't care as much for - it is a very poorly designed programming language after all).
2023: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38059961
2023: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37514601
2022: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31290789
2021: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28988778
2017: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15427848
2015: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9595507
2013: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6309696
2010: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1494999
2009: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=776381