This is a fork of MenuetOS [0]. The author of MenuetOS (Ville M. Turjanmaa) does not appear thrilled about the fork and has put the 64bit version under a proprietary license [1].
> Well, they took the code and in a couple of weeks also added their own copyrights to the beginning of all kernel files, booting, multitasking, GUI, networking, drivers, all. I'm not planning to find out if it would happen again.
> Currently Menuet is the only OS written 100% in assembly with modern feature-set and it took us some time to realize this goal. This is also an easily identifiable place in the computing world.
> And like always, if somebody wants to be part of Menuet development, then just send me a message.
According to KolibriOS' site the fork happened in 2004 so it isn't like some recent move where they got the source, added the copyright and then presented everything as own work. This is mentioned in the first page of the site too.
Depending on the license (caveat: I've not checked) the issue isn't the source being used it is the apparent attempt to claim copyright of the code the fourth is derived from (slapping their copyright messages in, with little/no indication that their contribution is only a small part of the work).
Even if the original license doesn't block this, it is still a bit of a dick move IMO.
Based on a face-value reading of the text above, it paints it as copyright violation.
That doesn't imply it's [entirely] true, but it certainly warrants some analysis. It's not clear what exactly happened without digging. As of today, one of the core files (`kernel.asm`[¹]) is clear about licensing, but the history may have been "not straightforward".
KolibriOS is an open-source Operating System for x86 (32-bit, 586-class and above). It is entirely written in assembly (assembled with FASM). It requires only 8MB of RAM to boot. It has a TCP/IP stack and USB support. It has a graphical user interface which is actually on par with most of the "lightweight" Linux window managers, such as LXDE (but I think LXDE is probably larger than this entire OS lol). It fits on a single floppy.
I remember when I could (and did) run Linux on a 486 with 8MB of RAM and 200MB of HD. Ran X11, fvwm, emacs, Netscape. It used to be possible. These things were done in the 90s :-)
For anyone interested in trying, remember to cut down your kernel. The default kernel on my (64 bit, granted) laptop is 12MB, compressed, without any modules.
NetBSD is a bit easier to run on 8MB systems these days. Still not super easy, but less fat to trim off. I think you might still need to trim down the default kernel, but at least there is a premade config for that (GENERIC_TINY)
If you're daring, it should work on 4 MB machines... ;)
The modern NetBSD kernel is is over 30MB and around 10 to 13 MB compressed in size on i386 and x86_64. So idk were you are getting its going to run in 8MB of memory without major swap slowdowns if it boots at all.
That's why I said you'd probably need to use a GENERIC_TINY kernel, which is "supposed" to work on 4MB systems.
Now, it's entirely possible that even with this minimal config it'll take up too much space, but it may work. I got NetBSD 8 to run on a VAX with 8MB of RAM, although that kernel has many fewer drivers/modules.
This looks really cool. The screenshot is awesome. Though I'm a bit put off by the giant Facebook logo on the homepage. I find it odd for an OS like this to organize their community on Facebook.
Sadly it's becoming more the norm to rely on other services for social interaction. The last company I worked for completely ditched forums in favor of Facebook groups for community support.
This happens a lot, but I've recently worked with a couple of clients who are trying to own the communities they built after migrating to Facebook because "that's where everybody is".
Turns out FB is capricious and has no problem pulling the rug out from under those companies and the communities they foster on Facebook without notice or recourse. Pages and groups with hundreds of thousands of followers can be wiped off FB and there's nothing your business can do about it.
If I were in their shoes, I'd just use FB as a funnel to an online property that I own and control.
Just tried it with the hopes it's not just another FOSS alternative to <popular app> that gets touted everywhere as 'better', but is very clearly worse in every way.
It's worse in every way. It's not even close to something as polished as Discord.
1. "Open in browser" is a good start, but then the registration process is downright painful. Discord doesn't require you to register at all to try it out, just to pick a nickname, it's vastly better for onboarding.
2. Requires unique nicknames. A chat app with unique nicks? this has to be a joke right?
3. As usual with FOSS, the worst part is the UI/UX. The whole design is extremely confusing. At first glance it appears the app only supports 'rooms'. But it seems that there are 'communities' and 'spaces' too? I have no idea what's going on. Discord just has servers with channels and private messages and it's all clearly indicated in the UI.
Listen, I do want to use open and free alternatives if possible. But let's be realistic and stop pretending that something like Matrix is anywhere near Discord. A more reasonable alternative would be Zulip.
I see this comment on so many different threads about so many different organizations who choose something other than Matrix. Matrix is clearly not a much better choice for most orgs, or more orgs would use it. That many FOSS orgs don't suggests that even people who believe in free software don't all see Matrix as a viable alternative to commercial solutions. Nebulously insisting that Matrix is "better" (without any specifics) doesn't help address the problems that drive people away.
But they do have forum which seems fairly active I don't see why they need to have Facebook. I am guessing it will have pretty niche crowd which probably don't frequents to fb.
The giant Facebook logo is probably from a time when Facebook was regarded with less suspicion than it is today. But if you want to avoid Facebook, you can use their good ol' phpBB forum. If you look at it more closely, the site is really a time capsule: forum powered by phpBB, documentation on MediaWiki, source code hosted on WebSVN, bug tracking powered by Mantis...
I'm very confused by this conversation. I am agreeing with you.
The line you quoted, I had in quotation marks because it was essentially the question of the parent thread, not because it was my stance.
"That context" meant that they started with tools like SVN for version control, and Facebook for their community. They were 'current' at the time and they probably haven't seen a reason to switch.
I have no problem with this. I use many tools people find uncool or outdated. I still use RCS in places and like it better for those particular use cases (eg Bind DNS zone files), where things like file locking and versioning files vs codebases are features and not detriments. I have shell scripts I've carried around for 10-15 years to support it (ironically kept in git now), and I don't feel like reengineering for a git/ci workflow to get back to feature parity.
You should look into the history of RCS->CVS->SVN (and revision control systems in general) to understand the nuances there.
People are downvoting this, maybe because of the fact-of-the-matter'ness, but I think this is probably true, coming from someone who despises Facebook. Especially for certain age-groups, Facebook is one of the few social networks you can assume people have logins on, and (maybe especially) niche communities need to lessen friction to get people involved.
I don't know, I've never tried to create a public forum for this kind of thing, but I'd bet you'd get more activity out of facebook than some bespoke web forum or IRC/Matrix/what have you.
Yes, it was engineered to be this way intentionally, through unregulated competition rules and systematic killing of any open alternative by way of massive pumping of capital.
We live in a disgusting scenario, we're held hostage by a racket.
I see a lot of people moving away from Facebook here in Europe though. Maybe not in the US.. But about half of my friends were either never on FB or left it recently. The other half are still there. Mainly the older people in fact. The younger ones are on other stuff (like Instagram which is of course also facebook I guess)
But I don't see it as viable as a sole outreach platform for that reason.
A lot of my friends are still there but using it much much less. Has happened over the past few years. It has kept up during our plague which I didn't expect. I figured it would pick up a bit with more people being indoors and not traveling as much. I think it's rotting from the inside out. I know accounts are one metric, but how is traffic doing?
off topic: this anti facebook stance by some people here on HN is getting ridiculous.. sad this is a comment here that apparently gets upvotes. I would say that if you do not care about Kolibri os just don't comment..
It's just not a great fit for an open source project IMO. They go to all this trouble to build something noncommercial without tracking, and then start requiring a commercial tracking platform to collaborate?
In fact one of the reasons I use HN so much is because it's not doing any of that. And because I can choose what I read (rather than Facebook's algorithms deciding what appears on my timeline). I'm sure many people come here for that reason. This'll be a reason for the many anti-facebook sentiments. Because those sentiments are one of the reasons to come here :)
I wish the authors started a crowfunding campaign to port it to ARM.
It would be a huge effort for sure (it's asm, ie rewrite just about everything from scratch) but it would pay a lot in the long run. I mean, it can be already spectacular on a mini PC, now imagine it running at these speeds on a 5x5cm $15 256MB RAM Allwinner H3, or any other similar specced, board where a Linux desktop would struggle to be useable after eating all resources. It would become an instant hit for providing ultra small systems with a fast and tight environment in which write network tools, dash boards for electronics projects with scriptable GUI primitives, etc.
Or rewrite most of it into small, quick C (or similar) - so it could be ported to other architectures easily. Overall size would be the major factor in speed and memory efficiency - rather than coding language.
Fun fact, the earliest versions of UNIX were, in fact, written in assembler, and rewritten piecewise into the bootstrapped "C" language, partially for portability (and sanity's) sake.
> a free open-source operating system written entirely in Assembly. The operating system weighs only about 3MB and will boot in less than 3 seconds even inside a virtual machine.
And it really is less than 3 seconds straight to desktop UI and ready to use immediately, incredible.
I have a laptop with NVMe on which if I setup Win10 to boot without password prompt and no BIOS test, I can have a working desktop from cold start under 2 seconds. I actually hate that kind of speed since if I want to change something in BIOS / have different startup (like OS recovery prompt for example) my F2 / Del / F8 pressing has a lot of misses.
Nowadays startup under 10 seconds is more of a hinder than a gain. My 2 cents
It is not a cold start. Actually, the fast start feature of Windows 10 allowed this feat. But in essential, it is just restoring a working session to the RAM.
Muhahaha, best joke of this week. You're funny, stupid, but funny. I like you :), because of people like you I get to earn big buck by straightening their fuck-up on projects. Please, stay like this, never change.
IIRC, you can use a PowerShell incantation to reboot to UEFI setup. So it's not ideal, but nevertheless manageable. Most Linux bootloaders also have this feature.
You're missing the point here. From cold boot to either desktop or password prompt I do not want that time to be less than 10 seconds. Hence why I have to hinder it by extending the BIOS by enabling all checks AND I make my Windows show me the entire list of drives it loads.
As I said, how long your computer waits on the BIOS screen to wait for a keypress is independent of the OS boot time, and can be set in the BIOS if you need it to be longer. Booting the OS happens after waiting for DEL, and are independent events, one has nothing to do with the other.
People used to program big projects in assembly with no fancy IDE all the time. It's largely a matter of structure and organizational practices. A good macro assembler can go a long way.
Will always upvote this whenever it pops up on HN. Bless this OS project and sincerely hope it gets the recognition it deserves. Have it installed on an Acer Aspire netbook and it just feels right! super snappy and everything mostly works.
Cool stuff. I Love the tiny OS paradigm since i first tried puppy Linux back in 06 (?). It is super fun what you can achieve with a trimmed to the basics desktop OS. I will give it a shot sometime soon.
GEOS etc. was amazing to me when I first used it as a child — it seemed like what computing should be. I don't remember what it was like in detail, but I remember the way I felt about it then.
It seems like it would be really hard to be productive developing large projects in Assembly. Adding features/bug and security fixes seems like they would be very time consuming. What are the advantages of going this low level vs C or similar?
Of which only the mental challenge is a given. Higher language compilers are steadily (still, after all those years) improving with no end in sight. Are your assembly programming skills? Are you rewriting old code with recently learned tricks? And once a superoptimizer is used, it's game over for hand assembly.
I mean, sure, but probably most programs we use these days are written in Javascript/DOM and gratuitously interface with remote systems. It demonstrably isn't difficult to write decent assembly that is faster than the naive RESTful APIs called by Javascript that makes our 8 core 2-5 GHz computers feel slower than a wet week. A system written entirely in assembly is probably going to be significantly faster than a modern general purpose computer, but it probably won't be running checking your work webmail any time soon.
Lots of talk about speed and size, has anyone noticed any cool aspects of the UI or basic OS metaphors? It looks pretty conventional to me, but in a little project sometimes fun ideas get put in places you wouldn't notice...
(Really I'd like to see something with the same kind of weird and divergent ideas as TempleOS but in a more accessible package)
Working on update: 100% complete. Don’t turn off your PC. This will take a while. Your PC will restart several times. All your files are exactly where you left them ;)
Except literally today I wanted to do a quick reboot of Ubuntu and I was stuck staring at "unattended-upgrade in progress during shutdown, please don't turn off the computer" for 30 minutes with no warning nor any indication of how long it would take. That managed to be far more infuriating than windows ever has with all of its update shenanigans.
It was enabled by default in the standard desktop install (I didn't really customize anything I'm not a heavy user of desktop Linux). Of course I'll be disabling it next time I boot that partition. Point being Linux isn't immune to this type of annoyance.
Probably to deal with corruption from people applying library updates and not restarting their programs because they keep running fine in memory. I have no idea how many bug reports could be ascribed to this, but if we want a user-friendly Linux we have to put up with the safer update process. It's not lengthy at all, wait less than one minute and you're set.
NixOS and GuixSD aren't user friendly because the people who use them are like GNU/Linux users circa 2000: people insane enough to install an operating system that is very particular about who its friends are.
But they do have an excellent solution to the whole updates debacle: Install them in a separate location, initialise them when booting or when they're finished installing, and delete them when they're inaccessible from a few standard locations like /boot or /proc.
I haven't ever run into that in 8 years of running a various GNU/Linux distros (MeeGo, Elementary OS, Maemo, Sailfish OS, Debian)... though I've never run Ubuntu.
Let’s be honest, both gnome’s and kde’s software centers are jokes. I don’t understand why, is there no interest because everyone installs things from a command line? It doesn’t seem to be such a hard problem.
> I'm baffled by people still claiming "desktop Linux hasn't arrived" when they put up with this shit.
I'm sorry, you say that as though Linux Desktop doesn't have a giant pile of its own shit to put up with. Windows definitely isn't perfect, but I'll still take its shit any day over Linux Desktop's.
Same with macOS for that matter. Still, it’s curious that Apple is quite behind other OSes concerning boot time. I almost never restart windows either, but when I need to (usually because waking up is still a hit or miss) it’s super fast.
Assuming 'less than a few seconds' is actually accurate, that's not quite the case - I dual boot with a NVMe and SATA SSD, and even the NVMe (running Void Linux with runit) still takes about 30 seconds to power on. Absolutely 'fast enough' and not really something I think is worth the effort to lessen, but still not less than a few seconds.
That seems very extreme. My Arch install on an M.2 SSD boots to terminal in about 3 seconds, and X starts in about a second. The BIOS delay is roughly 5 seconds or so. Granted it's a fairly minimal install, but that shouldn't cause an order of magnitude difference.
I don't think runit has an equivalent for `systemd-analyze blame`, but something is probably slowing things down by a lot.
My firewall is an AMD 5130 (pre Zen) with 4 GB RAM and a SATA SSD, running Debian stable with sysvinit. It reboots in less than 30 seconds, which means that most of the time TCP sessions passing through it stay up.
So the OS doesn't have a login username/password? Seems like a non-starter for most. I'm using full-disk encryption on Linux using systemd-boot and my OS boots pretty much as fast as this too.
This is not criticism, just a statement.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MenuetOS [1] http://board.flatassembler.net/topic.php?p=216272#216272