A minuet (/ˌmɪnjuːˈɛt/; also spelled menuet), is a social dance of French origin for two people, usually in 3/4 time. The word was adapted from Italian minuetto and French menuet, possibly from the French menu meaning slender, small, referring to the very small steps, or from the early 17th-century popular group dances called branle à mener or amener.
The term also describes the musical style that accompanies the dance, which subsequently developed more fully, often with a longer musical form called the minuet and trio, and was much used as a movement in the early classical symphony.
The name may refer to the short steps, pas menus, taken in the dance, or else be derived from the branle à mener or amener, popular group dances in early 17th-century France (Little 2001). The minuet was traditionally said to have descended from the bransle de Poitou, though there is no evidence making a clear connection between these two dances. The earliest treatise to mention the possible connection of the name to the expression pas menus is Gottfried Taubert's Rechtschaffener Tantzmeister, published in Leipzig in 1717, but this source does not describe the steps as being particularly small or dainty (Russell 2006, 140–41). At the period when it was most fashionable it was controlled, ceremonious and graceful.
MenuetOS is an operating system with a monolithic preemptive, real-time kernel, including video drivers, all written in FASM assembly language, for 64-bit and 32-bit x86 architecture computers, by Ville M. Turjanmaa. It has a graphical desktop, games, and networking abilities (TCP/IP stack), yet it still fits on one 1.44 MB floppy disk. On an Intel Pentium MMX 200 MHz it can boot in 5 seconds.
MenuetOS was originally written for 32-bit x86 architectures and released under the GPL, thus many of its applications are distributed under the GPL.
The 64-bit MenuetOS, often referred to as Menuet 64, remains a platform for learning 64-bit assembly language programming. The 64-bit Menuet is distributed without charge for personal and educational use only, but without the source code.
Multi-core support was added on 24 Feb 2010.
MenuetOS development has focused on fast, simple, efficient implementation. MenuetOS has networking abilities, and a working TCP/IP stack. Most of the networking code is written by Mike Hibbett.
Menuet is a 1982 Belgian-Dutch drama film directed by Lili Rademakers. The film was selected as the Belgian entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 55th Academy Awards, but was not accepted as a nominee.