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MenuetOS

menuetos.net

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Re: MenuetOS

#31

Post by pjmlp »

Sirened wrote: post #20

Always love hobby operating systems which leave UNIX and POSIX behind. It's really a shame that we're slowly converging on POSIX being the basis of _all_ operating systems since it forces some bizarre and undesirable design decisions [1]. Dropping POSIX and building something new gives us a chance to actually explore novel ideas in operating systems design. [1] https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/uploads/prod/20…

Depends where you look.

The cloud OSes have long left classical UNIX behind, Kubernetes or managed languages on top of type 1 hypervisors are the name of the game, even if there is some POSIX based kernel somewhere on the stack.

On the mobile side, although Android and iOS have some POSIX support, it hardly matters for app development.

Even on macOS, which is a certified UNIX, if you want access to some of the modern networking APIs, they are only exposed at Objective-C level.

So while POSIX kind of has won, long term it has been yet another phase in the history of computing, thus looking forward to such alternatives.

Re: MenuetOS

#32

Post by pjerem »

jotm wrote: post #30

When I first stumbled upon it in the very early 00's people were hyped about it fitting on a floppy (the "save" icon :P). Pretty amazing even today.

Same. And to be honest, since I played with it as a teenager, MenuetOS pretty always come to my mind when I see how we waste computing ressources nowadays.

Of course I know that MenuetOS fitting in a floppy is more a challenge for the author than something we should aim for for regular software. But still, I sometimes calculate in my mind "how much MenuetOS floppies is this" when I download and use some basic app written in Electron. Even a lot of websites are heavier than that.

I think MenuetOS and a modern app are two extremes and I say to myself that we should aim for some just middle.

Re: MenuetOS

#33

Post by mike_hock »

Sirened wrote: post #20

Always love hobby operating systems which leave UNIX and POSIX behind. It's really a shame that we're slowly converging on POSIX being the basis of _all_ operating systems since it forces some bizarre and undesirable design decisions [1]. Dropping POSIX and building something new gives us a chance to actually explore novel ideas in operating systems design. [1] https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/uploads/prod/20…

> In this paper, we argue that fork was a clever hack for machines and programs of the 1970s that has long outlived its usefulness and is now a liability.

Based.

Re: MenuetOS

#34

Post by vintermann »

kingcharles wrote: post #16
indigodaddy wrote: post #11

Not really any current processors in the tested hardware list on the site. Would we expect it to work on current Intel/AMD architectures?

I would expect it would boot and work fine. Drivers is where most hobby OSes fall down. Your sound card might not work. Or your USB chipset etc. And hobby OSes like this often do a lot of things in software that are available in hardware, which ruins their performance.

Thing is, everything runs on hypervisors these days anyway. It already has to virtualize your sound card, your USB chipset etc.

Re: MenuetOS

#35

Post by Underphil »

vintermann wrote: post #34
kingcharles wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would expect it would boot and work fine. Drivers is where most hobby OSes fall down. Your sound card might not work. Or your USB chipset etc. And hobby OSes like this often do a lot of things in software that are available in hardware, which ruins their performance.

Thing is, everything runs on hypervisors these days anyway. It already has to virtualize your sound card, your USB chipset etc.

What do you mean when you say 'everything runs on hypervisors'?

That may be true in the datacentre and the cloud.

Re: MenuetOS

#36

Post by anta40 »

Klonoar wrote: post #5

There's a fork of this as well, though I don't know much about why the fork happened or anything: http://kolibrios.org/en/

I haven't touch KolibriOS for a few years. It used to be 32-bit only, not sure today.

Re: MenuetOS

#39

Post by andai »

cmeacham98 wrote: post #28

The author seems to be violating the GPL with Menuet64? Menuet64 is pretty clearly a derivative work of Menuet32, which is GPL. However, Menuet64 is released under a non-free license. Originally I believed the author may be the sole author of Menuet32, and thus could relicense to whatever they wanted. However, the release notes ( https://www.menuetos.net/relnotes.htm ) credit many other authors with their contributio…

Does anyone know the history or motivation behind this? Wikipedia says "The 64-bit main distribution is now proprietary" implying it used to be free?

Re: MenuetOS

#40

Post by qwertfisch »

andai wrote: post #39
cmeacham98 wrote: post #28

The author seems to be violating the GPL with Menuet64? Menuet64 is pretty clearly a derivative work of Menuet32, which is GPL. However, Menuet64 is released under a non-free license. Originally I believed the author may be the sole author of Menuet32, and thus could relicense to whatever they wanted. However, the release notes ( https://www.menuetos.net/relnotes.htm ) credit many other authors with their contributio…

Does anyone know the history or motivation behind this? Wikipedia says "The 64-bit main distribution is now proprietary" implying it used to be free?

No, M64 was never free, as far as I can tell. I remember stumbling over M32 around 2006, when I was interested in OS development while being a CS student. I kept interest, and some time later a 64 bit version was published, but no source code, unfortunately.

The project kept growing a bit, very slowly. Seems like after v1.00 the author lost most interest. So if it is still a prototype work without any commercial usage, it would be great to have it published with source code.

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