MenuetOS: Written in Assembly, fits on a floppy, has GUI

An interview with two of the developers:<p><a href="http://www.goodgearguide.com.au/article/315421/we_talk_developers_behind_menuetos_an_operating_system_written_entirely_assembly_language?pp=1" rel="nofollow">http://www.goodgearguide.com.au/article/315421/we_talk_devel...</a>

<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KolibriOS" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KolibriOS</a> deserves a mention too, GPL fork of MenuetOS.

That's not just a GUI -- it looks like it supports alpha transparency. That's certainly more than I expected out of a floppy disk.

Interesting and impressive.<p>The 64 bit floppy image runs fine under VirtualBox if you select a 64 bit OS.

What's a floppy?

I have to admit, that's some of the friendliest looking assembly source code I've seen. <a href="http://www.menuetos.net/e64.asm" rel="nofollow">http://www.menuetos.net/e64.asm</a> Granted, I haven't looked at assembly in over 15 years...

I think this kind of projects are good reminders that modern computers have incredible amounts of processing power and storage capacity. If only all that power could be harnessed efficiently....<p>I also think that legacy cruft is hindering development in computers. One reason why (GNU/)Linux was able to advance so quickly was that it had much less legacy than other systems, allowing more freedom for developers to do stuff better way.

Reading the changelog belies the complexity of that project... I would dearly love to have the time to take a look at the code for it.<p>Well done!

I would rather see a hand-optimized version of L4, packaged with a kernel for Debian.<p>Or an OS written in Forth.

I remember similar projects many years ago: - QNX - SqueakOS - SqueakNOS

Amazing. The hardest part probably was to find a floppy drive to read / write the floppy. I don't think I have installed one on my last 2 rigs.

So does having all the labels in UPPERCASE save that much space?

Wow it's improved since I tried it about a year ago

Which one is more active, KolibriOS or MenuetOS?

Cool, but can I run Erlang on it?

Seemed like a good idea when they first got it out. It seems now like it was soo long ago.<p>Maybe it is interesting for embedded devices, but seems they've lost their purpose. It was never meant for business, but again, what's the point?