
Today we are hosting an interview with Ville Turjanmaa, the creator of the
Menuet Operating System. Menuet is a new, 32-bit OS, it fits to a single floppy (along with 10 or so more applications that come as standard with the OS). It features protection for the memory and code, it has a GUI running at 16,7 million colors, sound at 44.1 khz stereo, easy of use and easy low level API. And the most important and notable feature? The whole OS was written in 100%, pure 32-bit x86 assembly code.
Surely most of the code speed comes from using the most efficient algorithms, but assembly itself is hardly the obstacle. Why not have best of the both worlds ? But if you're critizising Menuet for being 'non-portable' assembly, you might as well take down AMD and Transmeta.