Linked by Thom Holwerda on Fri 28th Mar 2008 20:36 UTC, submitted by michael135
OSNews, Generic OSes MenuetOS 0.82 has been released. "MenuetOS is an Operating System in development for the PC written entirely in 32/64 bit assembly language, and released under the License. It supports 32/64 bit x86 assembly programming for smaller, faster and less resource hungry applications."
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RE[2]: Released under the Licence.
by ohxten on Fri 28th Mar 2008 23:31 UTC in reply to "RE: Released under the Licence."
ohxten
Member since:
2008-02-17

Wait... condescending like how you responded to my submission for Whitix 0.03? "Version 0.03 was released a month ago. My, aren't we sharp today." (You were incorrect, by the way. It _wasn't_ released a month ago).

Anyway, back on topic. I must say MenuetOS doesn't impress me much anymore. It's awesome that it's in assembly, and it's real neat, but it has it's flaws. For one thing, being written in assembly, it's not as fast as it should be (or at least, it doesn't feel as fast as even Windows, certainly doesn't feel as fast as *nix). Also, it's not a very good development environment, IMHO.

That being said, MenuetOS is an amazing hobby OS... probably my favorite. Very unique. But since MenuetOS 64-bit was released, it seems that the userbase has been shrinking (or is it just me?)

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Thom_Holwerda Member since:
2005-06-29

Wait... condescending like how you responded to my submission for Whitix 0.03? "Version 0.03 was released a month ago. My, aren't we sharp today." (You were incorrect, by the way. It _wasn't_ released a month ago).


Uhm, that was self-mockery. I was talking about *OSNews*. About myself. I don't 'respond' to submissions, I post news stories. They are attributed to ME, and as such, when I saw 'we' or 'I', it's always about OSNews and myself.

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ohxten Member since:
2008-02-17

Fair enough, I misunderstood. No hard feelings, but the way it was written seemed like it was directed towards me. I guess not. ;)

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sbergman27 Member since:
2005-07-24

For one thing, being written in assembly, it's not as fast as it should be

Or perhaps some people's expectations of the speed of hand coded assembly versus a good optimizing C compiler are out of date. Writing in assembly is certainly a worthy personal challenge. But the result if of little to no practical benefit. It's supremely unportable, and unlikely to be as well optimized as well written C.

What seems odd to me it the proprietary license they put on the 64 bit version, as if they thought that this nascent OS, imbued with all the advantages that mid 1960's development technologies can give it, is actually worth something in 2008. (Aside from a sense of personal satisfaction to the developers, of course, which would be valid.)

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madcrow Member since:
2006-03-13

The developer made it proprietary because he got pissed that some people had some ideas of their own and spun them off in a fork called KolibriOS. Wanting to keep the project wholly "his baby" and not have to share with other people, he was a jerk and closed the source.

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sakeniwefu Member since:
2008-02-26

I agree, if a HL-programmer is doing it.

Coders that can write an OS in assembly are not your regular script-kiddie.

I cannot understand how people can trust a dead sloth like GCC to optimize their code hoping that it will be better than hand-crafted assembly.

I think the slowness of MenuetOS is more related to not having HW rendering. You cannot move huge 32-bit bitmaps around with your CPU and expect to run fast. XP is slow with default SVGA drivers, Linux is slow even with semi-accelerated drivers.

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michael135 Member since:
2006-06-21

Menuet has CPU caches disabled by default. When enabled, you'll notice a considerable performance boost.

Edited 2008-03-29 18:48 UTC

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Brendan Member since:
2005-11-16

For one thing, being written in assembly, it's not as fast as it should be (or at least, it doesn't feel as fast as even Windows, certainly doesn't feel as fast as *nix).

A fast algorithm in a HLL language will easily beat a slow algorithm in assembly; and well written HLL code will easily beat poorly written assembly code (for the same algorithm).

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