I believe I run MenuetOS once over decade years ago. Now it's 26 years old since its first release. I can only be jealous of such stamina and wish it prosperous years ahead.
I wonder why that is. I imagine there's a number between 0 and 1 that reflects how many people have an interest in stealing and commercializing this project.
To be honest, while KolibriOS is open-source, I wouldn't call it "active" that much. MenuetOS has progressed much further than KolibriOS over the years in both performance (it has SMP support!) and being 64-bit.
I remember stumbling uppon Menuet when it was still 32 bits only, (probably around 2006?). I tried it, booting from an actual floppy disk at the time. Nowadays, I don't even know where I would find a computer that still has a floppy disk drive. Time flies.
I remember doing this too, a little bit later. It would churn on the disk for minutes on end, and usually fail. I think I got it to work once or twice.
Floppy disks and drives were plentiful, but scrap in those days. So of course those were the machines I got to play with as a kid at that time. Many of my disks were not in the best condition, or they were some of the post-2000s ones that were low quality to begin with.
I remember people were making various editions of "mini windows" 3.11 on a floppy disk around that time also.
I believe I run MenuetOS once over decade years ago. Now it's 26 years old since its first release. I can only be jealous of such stamina and wish it prosperous years ahead.
Has it had any commercial success?
Interview With Ville Turjanmaa, the Creator of MenuetOS (2001) (1)
Ville Turjanmaa: The current distribution fits to a single floppy and I plan to keep the basic OS functions that way.
— Man of his word!
1. https://www.osnews.com/story/93/interview-with-ville-turjanm...
Note that the 64-bit version is not open source.
KolibriOS (https://kolibrios.org/en) is an active fork of the open source 32-bit version.
I wonder why that is. I imagine there's a number between 0 and 1 that reflects how many people have an interest in stealing and commercializing this project.
To be honest, while KolibriOS is open-source, I wouldn't call it "active" that much. MenuetOS has progressed much further than KolibriOS over the years in both performance (it has SMP support!) and being 64-bit.
You can check the commit activity: https://git.kolibrios.org/KolibriOS/kolibrios/commits/branch... - last commit on the first page is already 10 months ago.
And compare it to "News" on the MenuetOS page: - 22.01.2026 M64 1.58.10 released - Improvements, bugfixes, additions
- 26.08.2024 M64 1.53.60 released - MPlayer included to disk image
- 24.07.2024 M64 1.52.00 released - Partial Linux layer (X-Window/Posix/Elf)
- 12.07.2024 M64 1.51.50 released - New graphics designs by Yamen Nasr
- 08.05.2024 M64 1.50.80 released - Fasm-G, many 32 bit apps & sources
I remember stumbling uppon Menuet when it was still 32 bits only, (probably around 2006?). I tried it, booting from an actual floppy disk at the time. Nowadays, I don't even know where I would find a computer that still has a floppy disk drive. Time flies.
I remember doing this too, a little bit later. It would churn on the disk for minutes on end, and usually fail. I think I got it to work once or twice.
Floppy disks and drives were plentiful, but scrap in those days. So of course those were the machines I got to play with as a kid at that time. Many of my disks were not in the best condition, or they were some of the post-2000s ones that were low quality to begin with.
I remember people were making various editions of "mini windows" 3.11 on a floppy disk around that time also.
A similar project discussed a couple days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46866544