MenuetOS Debuts

Eugenia Loli-Queru writes: "OSNews is hosting an interview with Ville Turjanmaa, the creator of the Menuet Operating System. Menuet is a new, 32-bit OS under the GPL and 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 (except with 3Dfx Voodoo cards), sound at 44.1 khz stereo etc. And the most important and notable feature? The whole OS was written in 100%, pure 32-bit x86 assembly code!"

Comments

Re:Anybody remember...

[GrouchoMarx]

Not entirely accurate. GEOS pre-dated Windows by years. In fact, GEOS predated the Macintosh. It started on the Commodore 64, from Berkeley Software (the After Dark folks). It was ported to the Apple IIe a mere month before the Macintosh was released. It was then ported to the PC, and was released on the PC at the same time as Windows 3.0. All of the reviews at the time said that GeoWorks Ensemble, as it was called, was the better program. Graphical interface, wastebasket (had that on the Commodore version, too), a Documents folder, a full office suite that at the time had the full range of features in word processing, spreadsheet, and VECTOR-BASED drawing apps (yes, like Adobe Illustrator light, a decade ago), and support for running DOS programs as well. The entire word processor was only a few hundred kb, and it ran FAST, on a 286 and up. Development was done in "Graphical Object C".

So what happened to it? GeoWorks (spun off from Berkeley) had no concept of marketing. Microsoft had an excellent concept of marketing, and a monopoly in DOS that they could build from. GEOS didn't stand a chance in the marketplace, and never took off.

So, GEOS was ported yet again, this time to an entirely new platform. It was the OS for the Casio Zoomer Z-7000, the first PDA (predated the Newton). But the hardware was big and clunky, so it never took off. But it did provide a breeding ground for a little company that made software for it, including the handwriting recognition system. They were called Palm Computing, and a little while later they would be bought up by US Robotics where Jeff Hawkins would churn out the first Palm Pilot, finally jump starting the PDA "revolution".

Yet another attempt was the porting of the GEOS 3.0 kernel to the Sharp PT-9000. It ran the same apps as the desktop suite, exactly the same apps. That made it completely and fully compatible between the two as a (gasp!) tablet-like PC, complete with pen interface. It had the level of integration in 1996 that Microsoft didn't dream of until 1999. But for reasons unknown, Sharp killed the project shortly before it was completed and it never saw the light of day.

A final gasp was the HP OmniGo 100LX and 110LX, both of which were clamshell devices running GEOS. Also a no-go.

Today, GeoWorks exists by owning a lot of patents on various obtuse concepts and pretending to have a case to file suit. Rather sad, really, but to this day my mother still uses GeoWorks Ensemble as her desktop environment.

So what's the point of this little offtopic jaunt? The failure of GEOS had nothing to do with being written in assembly. It had nothing to do with it being late to finish, it predated all the big names, and in fact did a better job of them. (Ensemble is still the standard by which I judge the usability of an environment, and none have yet to match it, except maybe the Palm.) It had everything to do with marketing and marketshare. GeoWorks had engineers, but not marketdrones, and the MS marketdrones rolled over them like they weren't there. Lessons to be learned for anyone attempting to develop a new OS today.

On asm vs "proper" programming

[Alan]

Ok, most of the responses to this so far have been "assembler doesn't give you that much improvement" , "assembler is a bad way to do things if you're trying to do them The Right Way".

Well, why can't he use asm? If I want to write an OS is BINARY that's a cool-ass hack, even if it is not The Right Way to do it. Come on guys, give the guy a break... he did something *awsome* and something probably 98% of us can't do (I know I certainly can't) and he should be credited for that. I'm not saying that this OS is something that should be taught in OS design courses, but it's still very very VERY cool :)

Re:On asm vs "proper" programming

[Alan]

So you know enough about assembler to write your own OS? Nice intimate knowledge of x86 hardware? And who says the abacus isn't a useful thing to know? Do you want your children to only learn how to punch 2+2 on a calculator and never learn how, and more importantly, *why* adding and subtracting and multiplication tables work?

I think the main point is that this is a *personal* achievement, not one for the computer community as a whole. Sure, there's no great need to do this, but man, if I had the time I'd love to try to do this, simply to see if I could. I wouldn't go down as the first anything, but the project would not be for fame or advancement of computing, but for personal advancement.