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Behind Menuet, an OS Written Entirely In Assembly
angry tapir writes "MenuetOS is an operating system written entirely in assembly language. As a result it's extremely quick and compact (it can even fit on a floppy disk, despite having a GUI). It can run Quake. Two of the developers behind MenuetOS took time out to talk about what inspired them to undertake the daunting task of writing the operating system, the current state of Menuet and future plans for it."
Are you sure they wrote the entire thing in assembly language?
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
Does it run Linux?
Oh wait...
It seems their webserver isn't written in assembler.
©God
Man, they should, like, totally port that to ARM. ;-)
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
*blink*
is that some kind of new super-awesome flexible organic flash memory?
weinersmith
I think I might work on a sequel...
Build a 747 with nothing but stone knives and bear skins...
Hard drive makers, you have my eternal gratitude.
You are right of course. What they need is some kind of software tool that can automatically and quickly generate code optimized for any new hardware that comes out. Rather than code in the particular assembly language of the processor of the day they could write out their algorithms in some kind of abstract, human readable script, which the aforementioned tool would then convert to assembly language.
Why has nobody thought to create such a useful tool for these poor chaps??
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
(it can even fit on a floppy disk, despite having a GUI)
Excellent, but if we're going to measure these things in obsolete technology;
- How many parchments would I need to copy it?
- Could my team of monks transcribe it in its entirety before the Feast of All Hallows Eve?
- If the Germans intercepted a morse transmissions of it, how long would it take them to crack the code and scupper our plans to retake mainland Europe?
No, a floppy disk is what you get when you leave a DVD in the back window of your car on a hot day.
Imagine what today's world would be like if Linus had gotten pissed when people started working with the Linux Kernel.
I'm guessing the population in the western world would be higher.
There's always some smart-arse coming up with reasons to disallow free beer at work, dammit.
If they wanted speed, they should have written the kernel in Java.
The very latest JVMs use clever "Just-In-Time" compilation techniques to dynamically re-write the code in real time, without any performance loss what-so-ever, typically giving speed-ups in the order of 50,000% compared to C, C++ and even the very best hand-crafted machine-code from assembler professors.
I guess now is not the right time to announce my OS written entirely in Javascript. It can already play the Bill Gates Pie in the Face game.
Can't put one past you, can they.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Wow, it's been since Windows 1.x that I've seen a GUI that looked like it was written in assembly. How retro.
All 5 of them?