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Yeah well I make mistakes. I'm just human. No need to be all condescending.

Consider it fixed.

Wait... condescending like how you responded to my submission for Whitix 0.03? "Version 0.03 was released a month ago. My, aren't we sharp today." (You were incorrect, by the way. It _wasn't_ released a month ago).

Anyway, back on topic. I must say MenuetOS doesn't impress me much anymore. It's awesome that it's in assembly, and it's real neat, but it has it's flaws. For one thing, being written in assembly, it's not as fast as it should be (or at least, it doesn't feel as fast as even Windows, certainly doesn't feel as fast as *nix). Also, it's not a very good development environment, IMHO.

That being said, MenuetOS is an amazing hobby OS... probably my favorite. Very unique. But since MenuetOS 64-bit was released, it seems that the userbase has been shrinking (or is it just me?)

Uhm, that was self-mockery. I was talking about *OSNews*. About myself. I don't 'respond' to submissions, I post news stories. They are attributed to ME, and as such, when I saw 'we' or 'I', it's always about OSNews and myself.

Fair enough, I misunderstood. No hard feelings, but the way it was written seemed like it was directed towards me. I guess not.

Or perhaps some people's expectations of the speed of hand coded assembly versus a good optimizing C compiler are out of date. Writing in assembly is certainly a worthy personal challenge. But the result if of little to no practical benefit. It's supremely unportable, and unlikely to be as well optimized as well written C.

What seems odd to me it the proprietary license they put on the 64 bit version, as if they thought that this nascent OS, imbued with all the advantages that mid 1960's development technologies can give it, is actually worth something in 2008. (Aside from a sense of personal satisfaction to the developers, of course, which would be valid.)

The developer made it proprietary because he got pissed that some people had some ideas of their own and spun them off in a fork called KolibriOS. Wanting to keep the project wholly "his baby" and not have to share with other people, he was a jerk and closed the source.

I agree, if a HL-programmer is doing it.

Coders that can write an OS in assembly are not your regular script-kiddie.

I cannot understand how people can trust a dead sloth like GCC to optimize their code hoping that it will be better than hand-crafted assembly.

I think the slowness of MenuetOS is more related to not having HW rendering. You cannot move huge 32-bit bitmaps around with your CPU and expect to run fast. XP is slow with default SVGA drivers, Linux is slow even with semi-accelerated drivers.

Menuet has CPU caches disabled by default. When enabled, you'll notice a considerable performance boost.

Edited 2008-03-29 18:48 UTC

For one thing, being written in assembly, it's not as fast as it should be (or at least, it doesn't feel as fast as even Windows, certainly doesn't feel as fast as *nix).

A fast algorithm in a HLL language will easily beat a slow algorithm in assembly; and well written HLL code will easily beat poorly written assembly code (for the same algorithm).

But all the drivers are VESA, slow and headache inducing.

Why don't they just whip up some accelerated video drivers in assembly?

You first.