Hello:
Hello, I'm new to the MenuetOS community. I saw it posted on BetaNews the other day and started reading up on it then. I've started reading about assembly and I'll have to see where that takes me.

This is my first loquacious post.

Thoughts:
I guess compatability should be something that gets taken care of before anything. I don't mean that out of the box every system will work, but perhaps more "driver" support so that the OS can be expereinced on more computers. As an example, I don't believe I am able to run MenuetOS because of my motherboard/nic. Until recently, even versions of linux had difficulties with my system, so it's not entirely unexpected.

The MenuetOS web site is overly simple. I think more time should be given/volunteered by the community, or a person, who knows more about the OS and can make the site more functional. As an example, there is a "To-do list" on the site, but I don't see a roadmap, or simple statement of where the OS is heading.

There are three (four including the old) forums. While some have commented that this is a positive thing because it spreads the word about the OS, I think it's easier to have a dedicated forum, or at least and official forum. These forums are very nice and facilitate the need, although as the product matures, perhaps the forum would be better served if it were sectioned off into sub categories.

Ideas:
The f@h project is a closed source project (if I read that correctly), but it would be kind of cool to see an ASM version of f@h that runs at boot-up, based on MenuetOS.

Conclusion:
I'm not, in any way, attempting to slam the OS or anything about it, quite the opposite actually. I would like to see something like this grow -- if I knew where it was heading and not just my idea of where it's heading.

Thanks for taking the time to read my first post in these forums!

>>>I don't believe I am able to run MenuetOS because of my
motherboard/nic.
I have the same chipset on my mb and i solve a launch problem!
You could run MEOS from image (*.exe) by pressing 2 (hd/1/menuet.exe or smth)

Hi Everyone,

The author has done a truly incredible job of creating to this point what I personally consider the "STRAIGHT LINE" from A to B.

The simplicity of creating a program for the MenuetOS along with
the sysfuncs and the amazing code I've seen so far....... wow.

We use Menuet for everything we possibly can around here.
Servers - Opens Doors - Mag Cards - control for lighting/motors & more

Multinational, Multilingual and Multi-experienced people contribute
to this project with no real guidance but more like a personal quest.

MenuetOS offers learning ASM to engineering applications or the admiration of your fellow man (for that choice piece of code ! )

Whenever the author decides to do whatever, is not an issue, I'm just anxious to see what comes next.

The "open-ness" of this project is part of the awesome flavor.

Great Job to everyone who has contributed so far.

Later, Mark

I'm fully with GrievousX on what he's saying.

Yet, for f@h, it's way before it could be ported.
And as well, networking isn't going to work well for a bit of time

For the website point, I'd be glad to give a hand but ...
** I looking at my dead hardware **
I'm missing a little of harddrives now.

I'll probably be able to provide mirroring when I got new ones.
Maybe also give a hand at devloping the website, IF I have time.
Anyway, I'll give feedback when I can do somthing ...

That's the way I found MeOS - I don't have a HDD in my laptop so Menuet OS was a great alternative to a memory/storage hogging OS like Windows.

AND IT'S OPEN SOURCE!!!

Yeah, but it's not able to provide a home for a community yet
Hope it'll soon can

I wished I added a little about GrievousX's point on forums :

Actually, "spreading the news" is good for MOS, but storing parts of it in different separate closed aeras of the Internet with near no connection, but a web page with a few links is not a way to spread, but to divide.

Where using multiple separate groups is bad for information exchange, it also requires people who want to spread info to post more than once.

In the opposite, you find mirroring. It is good, because it enables anyone to share **ALL** data worldwide, groupswide, quickly, easily, and just needs the data to be posted once to get everyone having access to it.

I'm currently working on some "mirroring boards" (forums that auto set mirrors up to date). The project is still on paper and pregnant, and I probably won't be able to begin real working on it until next week. This could be of good help for the MOS community.

About File Storing Convention

As another Idea, I whish to ask if anything as been planed for file storing conventions. Do MOS is intended to futurely use POSIX or shall it use a different convention ?

I know this seems to be out of the point, because files reading/writing is not really functionnal for now, and so are much other related things. However, I find obvious that if we already have a good theory on what we want to do, it will help much for developing MOS. Although, what I post here is only a SUGGESTION, and may be totally rejected by the team and/or the community. Yet, if nobody speaks, nothing is gonna be done. So here I give ideas that came to me ...

Seeing what choices have been made up to there, I think the teams' choice is to provide some OS just like lambda frontend users would like it to be : free, functional, powerfull, easy to use, intuitive ...

To be honnest, I don't find POSIX is complying with this description, nor the actual anarchist "non-convention" does (of course !!). This is why I thought about some POSIX-inspired-but-simplified convention.

Actually, having the user to browse the phisical tree does **NOT** seem, to my point, to be a good idea. This is the actual crapness of µ$ or what could make users afraid of *nixes ... : "But WHY is this fu**in' configuration folder named 'etc' ??". Moreover, browsing the physical tree may result in opening the system to various hacks or silly things like writing over the system, or breaking accidentally into it.

So I thought about some virtual tree that could be generated on-the-fly and which would be actually be browsed by the user. In this, the user may not write to nor even read from many parts of the system but some that would be known and explicitly "opened".

For instance, user may **NOT** have access to kernel, but may alter config files. Kernel updates may be done by some secured proccess, such as putting updates (or updated kernel) in a specific place, and reboot the computer. Then, the kernel is automatically patched (if patch is certified and complies with security norms).

For the known places where user shall have access, there will be three, mainly. Those are :

(Names are given as instances ...)

/apps/
Here shall go any program tha is able to run on MenuetOS

/usr/
Here shall go any of users files.

/conf/
Here shall the user edit the config ...

/apps/ would be looking as a big folder in which you'll find packages of applications. You can sort them, etc ... Let's take an instance with the program tinypad.

/apps/tinypad would represent the software package. Remove it and software is uninstalled, copy a package from anywhere to your /apps/ and you install it. Easy !

opening tinypad, you get three folders :

/apps/tinypad/asm/
Here shall go any sources of the program. Even non-asm sources.

/apps/tinypad/bin/
Here shall go the assembled binaries. Maybe version1, version2, etc

/apps/tinypad/conf/
Here, tada ! You get the config

Note that I don't use "src" that is still easy to understand or "etc" (more obscure) from POSIX standard, because I found it fun using ABC 'Asm, Bin, Conf'

As for the /usr/, you get a subfolder for each user :

/usr/admin/
Admin's files

/usr/toto/
toto's files

/usr/guest/
guest's files

... and so more ...

For /conf/ I didn't have any ideas so it's free and up to you

Of course, power users may be able to access a "full" mode =)

Here is it ; I hope you enjoyed it, or even that you hated it (for good reasons i suppose). Now please free to criticize or to agree, but please make it constructively. Anybody may find it prematured, but it just took me a few secs to imagine this and I don't think it's wasted time. Anyway I don't mind if the idea is rejected because it's not a huge amount of work, actually it's just a very specific approach of the problem, but an intersting one and usually not weighty for programers. It's also an approach that lets a big freedom for many things, which are up to you imagination.

Why not? We are actually a fast growing community.



I see in another way: people tend to specialize in a few sectors in order to be productive. People with common interests make joins to grow projects and then there are people that like to specialize in distribution.

I like your idea about defining a standard (posix or not) but clearly defined. It is better for all of us.

Of course, you'll always get different boards for this part or that part on forums for a project. This is a clearness neccessity

But I think MOS boards are too much separated ... it's just my point. I think it should be easier to switch between boards, at least.