MenuetOS: An entire operating system in x86_64 assembly

127 points by gorenb 1 year ago | 45 comments
  • 1vuio0pswjnm7 1 year ago
    2009 might be earliest HN commentary, but MenuetOS dates back to at least 2005 according to the Internet Archive.

    https://web.archive.org/web/20051215234548if_/http://www.co....

    https://web.archive.org/web/20051030022655if_/http://www.men...

    • seritools 1 year ago
      Kinda weird to use IA for this instead of just looking it up on Wikipedia

          Initial release: May 16, 2000; 23 years ago (32-bit)
      • larvaetron 1 year ago
        I don't see anything "kinda weird" about that.
        • Dalewyn 1 year ago
          It is weird to anyone who didn't grow up being told to not cite Wikipedia as a source of information in any authoritative capacity, being told to instead dig for and cite the original source instead which a tool like Internet Archive is useful for.

          Culture shock stemming from a generation gap, I guess.

          (Obviously this distinction is not important for most comments here on Hacker News which are just written in passing, but if this was an academical setting you would, presumably and hopefully, get laughed out of the room.)

      • 1vuio0pswjnm7 1 year ago
        Here's a Windows installer for MenuetOS from 2001.

        https://web.archive.org/web/20011122052147if_/http://www.ddj...

        https://ftp.math.utah.edu/pub/tex/bib/toc/dr-dobbs-2000.html

        • fiddlerwoaroof 1 year ago
          Earlier than that: I remember booting it on my Pentium 90 before 2003
        • snvzz 1 year ago
          Mandatory mention to KolibriOS[0], an open-source fork of MenuetOS.

          0. http://kolibrios.org/en/

          • sparcpile 1 year ago
            covered quite a few times over the years

            https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37514601 (2023)

            https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31290789 (2022)

            https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28988778 (2021)

            https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9595507 (2015)

            https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1494999 (2010)

            https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=776381 (2009)

            • frozenport 1 year ago
              mom said its my turn to repost it!
            • josephcsible 1 year ago
              Why did they go closed-source for the 64-bit version?
              • frankjr 1 year ago
                > Menuet64 is closed source because M32 was forked and new copyrights just slapped at the beginning of practically all 32bit source files (multitasking, drivers, GUI, networking..) without any permission. You can take a guess about the country in question.

                https://board.flatassembler.net/topic.php?t=22194

                • mike_hock 1 year ago
                  How does that make sense? That has always been and will always be possible with any open source project. Should every other project go closed source too just because Russia can fork it and say "I made this"?
                  • msla 1 year ago
                    Yeah, that excuse makes perfect sense if you don't think about it.
                    • The_Colonel 1 year ago
                      Closing down the source was likely an emotional, rather than a rational reaction. The author simply got pissed and didn't want this to happen again.
                      • up2isomorphism 1 year ago
                        It makes sense that the fact you are making a big deal of it while you didn’t get to say anything about apple macos since it was never open source in the first place.
                      • chungy 1 year ago
                        That seems like an awfully petty reason. (and does the forum censor the word "Russia" or something?)
                        • weikju 1 year ago
                          > You can take a guess about the country in question.

                          For the curious, it appears to have been done by people in Russia (state-sponsored or not is unclear)

                          • xvilka 1 year ago
                            It would be ridiculous for a state to sponsor a toy OS. I think it's absurd.
                        • haolez 1 year ago
                          They must have at least one customer where this makes sense.
                        • marttt 1 year ago
                          Is the IntelHDA audio driver only available for 64-bit MenuetOS? According to the release notes, it was first included in version 0.96X, which seems to be 64-bit.

                          The developer has only made one 32-bit version (0.86) availabe, though. Would be great to have past releases available as well.

                          EDIT: Apparently the 32-bit versions have not come too far in the last 12+ years -- in 2011 (when the Intel HDA driver was released), version 0.85 of M32 was downloadable: https://web.archive.org/web/20110615210928/http://www.menuet...

                          I'm learning some assembly (on FreeDOS), so MenuetOS is interesting. Was hoping to test it (+ the HDA audio, for 24-bit playback -- and maybe try to make sense of the audio driver source, for a hobby project) on a Dell Mini 9, which is 32 bit. It's time to move on then, I guess.

                          • m64 1 year ago
                            Intel HDA audio driver is available for Menuet64. M64 also has under 1 ms audio latency, or even under 0.1 ms audio latency. Part of the latency setup is adjusting the scheduler interval up to 0.1 Mhz.
                            • marttt 1 year ago
                              Thanks! ("Time to move on" = mmmaybe put those 32-bit machines aside, ohwell; I'm long time aware and still curious about MenuetOS, also as a huge fan of minimalist systems. The Dell Mini 9 is a really cool fanless netbook, though, esp for the ~5€ I paid for it, ha. Would be great to test MenuetOS with audio on it as well. That M64 latency is surely impressive.)
                          • anta40 1 year ago
                            Menuet (and Kolibri) are most likely the only OSes written in asm which are still under active development until today...
                          • axiomdata316 1 year ago
                            Is there any examples of practical uses of this OS or is this more of a passion project?
                            • RetroTechie 1 year ago
                              Check under "screenshots".

                              Could be just the vehicle someone needed to get into x86 coding on bare metal.

                              And serves as a nice counterpoint for "optimizing compilers outperform skilled assembly coders". Regardless of whether that's true or not.

                            • RagnarD 1 year ago
                              I wonder if using this makes the most sense from a "security by obscurity" standpoint. It doesn't seem likely that blackhats would spend a lot of time hacking into such a marginally used OS.
                            • CyberDildonics 1 year ago
                              This is at least 24 years old.
                              • endgame 1 year ago
                                The news page indicates a new release on 2023-10-26, which is impressive diligence.
                                • taylorportman 1 year ago
                                  Menuet & Kolibri are still actively maintained though.