The End Of Minix? 411
Otter writes "Minix is best known as the Unix clone for x86 that inspired Linus Torvalds to write one himself. It's pretty much dropped off the map since. The latest patch for XFree86's xterm drops support for Minix. As the changelog notes, 'Juliusz Chroboczek noted it was removed from XFree86 server; there have been no users since 1996.'"
The question is (Score:5, Funny)
Re:The question is (Score:4, Funny)
Re:The question is (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:The question is (Score:3, Insightful)
If you want proof that MicroKernels are neat, go and get QNX. [qnx.com]
The REAL Question is (Score:5, Funny)
Re:The REAL Question is (Score:3, Interesting)
Let's get some facts. Is that true or not? Does Minix, like Linux, use the entire GNU suite of tools?
Re:The REAL Question is (Score:3, Informative)
so XFree86 = usage stattistics? (Score:4, Insightful)
Just b/c they feel that there have been no users since 1996 (which is probably the case, but not the point) that means the end of Minix?
At least get some real proof it is dead before you put such scandalous headlines on the frontpage
Re:so XFree86 = usage stattistics? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:so XFree86 = usage stattistics? (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a shame, as I learned on Minix, and still have a spot in me heart for it.
Re:so XFree86 = usage stattistics? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:so XFree86 = usage stattistics? (Score:2)
Re:so XFree86 = usage stattistics? (Score:3, Interesting)
Not a problem. I have old NCD X-Terms which only have a 68k processor @ 10 or 12 Mhz and 1-4 MB RAM. They run X just fine. Don't expect miracles, though. Netscape takes a minute to draw...
Re:so XFree86 = usage stattistics? (Score:3, Insightful)
That's assuming that the godawful graphics in your 286 make X worthwhile. Anything less than 1024x768 would just be pointless.
Worse, wasting a 15+" monitor on a 286, when a pentium can be had for less than the price of a monitor?
Hardware requirements (Score:3, Informative)
HARDWARE REQUIRED
To run MINIX 2.0, you need a PC driven by an 8088, 286, 386, 486, or Pentium CPU. The system must be 100% hardware compatible with the PC-AT and its successors (i.e, EISA bus, IDE disk, etc.).
To run the 16-bit version, 640K is the minimum. To run the 32-bit version, 2MB is the minimum. To run comfortably, another 512K is needed.
A hard disk is not technically required, but is strongly recommended to take full advantage of the system. To load all the sources and be able to recompile the system, 30 MB is the practical minimum but with a 20 MB disk partition, you can still run and compile parts of the system.
The system must have either a CGA, EGA, VGA, monochrome, or Hercules video card, or another card that emulates one of these. Both 5.25" and 3.5" diskettes are supported, as are printers using the parallel port and modems and terminals using the serial ports. Mitsumi CD-ROMs are also supported, as are some Ethernet cards.
Re:so XFree86 = usage stattistics? (Score:3, Interesting)
Ever since everybody begun to think desktops were requirements of a computer.
I for one don't even run X on my FreeBSD machine. I mean, it's installed, don't get me wrong. But I don't use it. I don't like it, why would I use it?
What's wrong with Bash?
Re:so XFree86 = usage stattistics? (Score:5, Insightful)
To browse the web. Lynx and co are nice and all, but the web really was the one final killer app in favour of the GUI.
The entire web paradigm is built graphical manipulation. You simply can not get a good web experience from the CLI.
Everything else you could argue, but not the web.
Re:so XFree86 = usage stattistics? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:so XFree86 = usage stattistics? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:so XFree86 = usage stattistics? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:so XFree86 = usage stattistics? (Score:5, Informative)
"Is MINIX dead?
Oh no. Far from it. It is simply focused on the target area it was always focused on: education. The excursion into hackerland was a detour. A co-author, Al Woodhull, and I have rewritten the MINIX book based on the new, POSIX-compliant, version of MINIX which Kees Bot produced. It is still be aimed at having students be able to learn the principles of operating systems and most of a real system in one semester. "
Hmmm... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Hmmm... (Score:3, Informative)
BTW, MINIX was an OS written by Andrew T, to be used chiefly, for teaching his students Operating Sytems. Linux, as we know it today, is a commercial Operating System. Hence it would be wrong to compare the two.
Re:Hmmm... (Score:5, Informative)
So the real influence of Minix on Linux was in the GPL. Linus was certain that he wanted to release his code under a license which encouraged change, because of his experiences with Minix. And in fact, it is the GPL which distinguishes Linux from other x86 Unices such as the BSDs, much more than anything technical.
Re:Hmmm... (Score:3, Interesting)
Heh...I just reread the Torvalds/Tanenbaum exchange, and was amused to see this from Tanenbaum on the newer and better CPUs that would be appearing:
What is going to happen is that they will gradually take over from the 80x86 line. They will run old MS-DOS programs by interpreting the 80386 in software.
I found that funny, considering what Linus does for a living now :-)
Tim
Minux is a teaching OS (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Hmmm... (Score:2)
"Minix is dying!"? (Score:5, Insightful)
Minux is dying! Clearly you can see that because its users don't use X windows!
Just had to
Re:"Minix is dying!"? (Score:2)
If Linus were Homer... (Score:5, Funny)
...I'd expect to see a post to comp.os.minix that had a single line:
In your face, Tanenbaum!
Re:If Linus were Homer... (Score:5, Interesting)
The ironic thing is that Tanenbaum's argument is now correct, even though it was not ten years ago.
Nobody would now would make a new monolithic kernel if they were in their right minds. However, nobody now would make a new Mach-alike if they were in their right minds either. Microkernels have finally proven themselves to be up to the job of being the basis of serious operating systems (e.g. BeOS, QNX, ChorusOS etc), but they're not the kinds of microkernels that Tanenbaum was advocating in 1992. Microkernels of the time spent far too much time shifting data between servers, whereas modern microkernels a) do at most as much address-space shifting as a monolithic kernel, plus b) they're even more "micro".
Re:If Linus were Homer... (Score:4, Insightful)
The point? Tanenbaum is a *Professor*. The key line "If you were my student, I'd give you an F." -- and he's right. From an academic standpoint, Linux's design was and mostly is completely uninteresting. He's not arguing for microkernels as much as telling a student that plagurizing 20-year old monolithic Unix wasn't exactly groundbreaking work.
The interesting parts of Linux (free versus $1000/seat, the development model, the licencing) probably belong in a Sociology or History of Technology paper rather than in the Computer Science department with Tanenbaum.
Re:If Linus were Homer... (Score:5, Informative)
QNX is an industry-proven, source-available-proprietary, hard-realtime OS. It's certainly a "serious operating system".
BeOS wasn't a microkernel in the first place.
MacOSX is not a microkernel, despite having Mach (bleurgh) code in it - device drivers are not shielded from eachother as in a true microkernel like QNX.
The Hurd is a collection of interacting processes intended to be based upon a microkernel. Mach-Hurd does indeed suck royally. L4-Hurd should not.
Re:If Linus were Homer... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:If Linus were Homer... (Score:3, Informative)
Google caught up. [google.co.uk]
Learning Source (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Learning Source (Score:2)
Re:Learning Source (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Learning Source (Score:2, Interesting)
It is a rather small amount of code.
Re:Learning Source (Score:4, Insightful)
It was written to be used as lab work for Operating sytem courses. I don't know about the "no users since 1996" comment. As recently as 1999 (when I was last in University) a group of undergrads were writing a process migration system for it.
While I agree BSD or Linux are probably much more practical for production use, they are a bit more daunting to the programming student.
Comparisons with Linux Miss the Point (Score:3, Informative)
I own both the first and second editions of Tannenbaum's Minix book. They're both buried in boxes right now, so I can't post a quote, but Minix was written as a teaching tool, not with any intent that it would ever be used a production OS or, for that matter, as a hobbyist OS. At the time, the only way for Tannenbaum to legally use source code as a pedagogic device to illstrate the workings of a Unix-like OS was to write it himself. The typical PC box then -- remember, this is 1987 -- was an XT without a hard drive.
In other words, Minix code was written to illustrate the points Tannenbaum makes in the book and to work on 640k green-screen XT's with one tiny 5 & 1/4-inch floppy.
Re:Learning Source (Score:2)
WSU's cs460 [wsu.edu] (and 360) use Minix in an introduction to programming operating systems.
What I would like to know is... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What I would like to know is... (Score:4, Informative)
Why do many TERMCAP databases contain vt100 definitions even though most people use a windowing system of some type? Why is the term tty used to describe your login session/device on many UNIX OS's when teletypes went out of fashion years ago? Why do we still refer to the act of the cursor returning to the beginning of a line as a carriage return?
Most likely the answer is cultural inertia. People are loathe to change things that either work just fine the way they are or simply show no pressing need to change them.
Re:What I would like to know is... (Score:5, Funny)
"BREAK GLASS IN CASE OF EMERGENCY"
Re:What I would like to know is... (Score:3, Funny)
>loose. That's why you should keep an old vt100
>behind a glass case for when the shit hits the fan,
>and you need a terminal, pronto!
I know you're joking, but There Was This One Site...
We got a call from another office in our organization asking if we still had any VT100s, their last terminal had just died. We did not have any, and we asked them why they wanted one...
The were using them to configure hubs/switches etc, and didn't realize that any old PC running Procomm or Telix etc. would be an acceptable VT100 replacement.
I can just imagine those guys lugging around VT100s to set up new hubs, heh heh.
Our solution wasn't sexy, we had a 286 monochrome laptop with Procomm, but it sure was portable.
is this really a question? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:is this really a question? (Score:5, Funny)
There are 25 million mac users, at least.
I'm not aware of any hippie communes that got larger than 25 people total-- at some point the fighting over women destroys the idea.
On the other hand, there were some religious sects that were able to grow their communes much more, and were much bigger than 25 people.
But they were only able to do this because they used religion to eliminate sex, and its attending issues.
Since Mac users get far more sex than the average computer user, (according to Gartner and IDC) this is not the case for Apple's market.
Re:is this really a question? (Score:3, Interesting)
But they were only able to do this because they used religion to eliminate sex, and its attending issues.
Except for the issue that eliminating sex meant that the commune wouldn't last but a single genration.
BTW: The Farm [thefarm.org] in Tennessee is still going strong with 200 members. So is Twin Oaks [twinoaks.org], a community based on B.F. Skinners ideas in Walden 2. Twin Oaks has 100 members. East Wind [eastwind.org] in Missouri has 85 members.
Eh (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Eh (Score:2, Funny)
educational (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:educational (Score:2, Insightful)
Minix will be around for many years to come, if only as a
Minix is dying (Score:5, Funny)
Yet another crippling bombshell hit the beleaguered Minix community when last month IDC confirmed that Minix accounts for less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of the latest Netcraft survey which plainly states that Minix has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. Minix is collapsing in complete disarray, as further exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.
You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict Minix's future. The hand writing is on the wall: *BSD faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for Minix because Minix is dying. Things are looking very bad for Minix As many of us are already aware, Minix continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood. FreeBSD is the most endangered of them all.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
Minix leader Julien states that there are 7000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of X86 Minix are there? Let's see. The number of X86 Minix versus 68K Minix posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 68K Minix users. PPC Minix posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of 68K Minix posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of PPC Minix. A recent article put X86 Minix at about 80 percent of the Minix market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 X86 Minix users. This is consistent with the number of X86 Minix Usenet posts.
Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, Minix went out of business and was taken over by BSDI who sell another troubled OS. Now BSDI is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.
All major surveys show that Minix has steadily declined in market share. Minix is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If Minix is to survive at all it will be among OS hobbyist dabblers. Minix continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, Minix is dead.
Minix is dying
No its, Minix is dying (Score:3, Funny)
Netcraft has now confirmed: Minix is dead Yet another crippling bombshell hit the beleaguered Minix community when recently IDC confirmed that Minix accounts for less than a fraction of 1 percent of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of the latest Netcraftsurvey which plainly states that Minix has mo market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. Minix is collapsing in complete disarray, as further exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin operating system awareness test.
You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict Minix's future. The hand writing is on the wall: Minix faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for Minix because Minix is dead. Things are looking very bad for Minix. As many of us are already aware, Minix has no market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood. Minix is the most endangered of all operating systems, having lost 99.99999% of its core developers.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
Juliusz Chroboczek noted it was removed from XFree86 server; there have been no users since 1996. This is consistent with the number of Minix related XFree86 Usenet posts.
All major surveys show that Minix has steadily declined in market share. Minix is very sick and its long term survival prospects are nil. If Minix is to survive at all it will be among OS hobbyist dabblers. Minix continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, Minix is dead.
Minix is dead.Re:OT: Your sig (Score:2)
Re:OT: Your sig (Score:3, Funny)
Evolution... (Score:2, Insightful)
Let's not forget ... (Score:5, Insightful)
So, while it may be dead (some may claim that it wasn't ever really alive), it is still alive through one of its most successful offsprings, our most beloved Linux!
The Raven.
It's still around (Score:4, Insightful)
So no, I wouldn't fire off that 'Minix is dying' troll just yet; the presence of Minix filesystem compatibility in its friendly rivals betrays the foothold Minix yet retains among many of the computers that power the Internet today. We wouldn't argue that Linux is dying simply because it doesn't have nearly the desktop share of Microsoft Windows, because we are aware that it is churning away out there just beneath the consciousness of most computer users. So too we should remember that Minix occupies as well a place within our hearts as well as within the Internet.
Was it superior (Score:4, Insightful)
WindowsNT uses the microkernel design, but most operating systems since DOS haven't used a monolithic kernel, which was only truly necessary in the days of extremely scarce resources. It's true that Linux does extremely well under many circumstances, but could it have been done even better with a nice, modular, microkernel design?
If history had changed and Minix took off instead of Linux, would we be better off today with the superiority of a microkernel design?
I think we would.
Re:Was it superior (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Was it superior (Score:4, Informative)
Er, no. It started off as microkernel, but things keep getting but into kernel space for performance reasons: thusly [freshmeat.net].
If history had changed and Minix took off instead of Linux, would we be better off today with the superiority of a microkernel design?
Hehe [gnu.org].
In conclusion: microkernels may or may not be theoretically `better', may or may not perform better, but they are fuckloads more work to do right.
Re:Was it superior (Score:2)
Are you serious? Not to be a troll...
But honest to god, what evidence have you seen of the effort picking up other than a few trivial updates. Last time I lurked on the mailing list, the most exciting update for that month was f'n keyboard drivers. YEs, keybaords are important.. but cummon'.
Cheers
I installed it last night (Score:3, Interesting)
Haven't gotten around to trying X yet.
I'm not sure where they're going with the project, really, because, as you said, there doesn't seem to be alot of active development. What is there are quite a few good ideas, and something that's Not Unix.
Got a spare ext2 partition sitting around? Give it a shot. The Hurd [gnu.org].
Unix implemented on a microkernel? (Score:3, Insightful)
Unix is built around the central idea of files (and the related pipes, sockets, etc...).
Microkernels, on the other hand, are built around the idea of IPC, or, to be more direct, function calls.
So if a microkernel is used only to exchange the function calls that are necessary to provide file system capabilities, then it is probably used very inefficiently.
I think microkernels are really the way to go for desktop systems, because desktop systems, while benefitting from the concept of files, have almost nothing to do with files. When you're working with a spreadsheet app, all that happens are function calls (or callbacks, which is really the same): you click the mouse, and the graphics/input systems calls a function in the spreadsheet app, which then performs some calculations. To display the changes, the spreadsheet app calls a series of functions in the graphics/input system.
No files involved, are there?
Of course, the X client/server design uses a file (a socket) to communicate the function calls, but that's really just an unnecessary layer of complexity.
So yes, I'm calling for a paradigm shift. Implement a system on top of a microkernel that doesn't give a shit about Unix (if it can run most POSIX apps then great - but don't make it a priority). Make it a desktop system. Use C++ as the major language of the operating system, so that components that reside in a different address space can easily be accessed as native language objects - and applications won't have to bother whether those components are local, in a different address space or on a different computer. There are many things that need to be worked out, but it can result in a very sane and flexible design.
Maybe something like this has already been implemented (or started), but I haven't found anything - microkernel developers seem to be focussed extremely on theory instead of practice.
go help this poor bastard (Score:2, Funny)
It won't really die... (Score:3, Interesting)
Nothing ever really dies. People write emulators for video game systems, and in turn those systems live on in one form or another. If Minix inspired Linux, then in all reality Linux is a living tribute to Minix. Hell, there are even people who keep Yugo Automobiles up and running!
The only way anything truely dies is if everyone up and abandons it. There have to be some Minix enthusiasts out there who will keep on tinkering with it. Who knows. Maybe an underground development network will spring up now that it's been declared all but extinct...
Still alive in academia (Score:4, Informative)
minix still great for what it was designed for (Score:4, Insightful)
How can there be no users... (Score:2, Interesting)
I figure at the very least the XFree86 people are still using it to test xterm right?
BTW Minix homepage: http://www.cs.vu.nl/~ast/minix.html
At the footer: "Last changed 1996", maybe that is how they get that "no users since 1996" quote.
Minix is a toy (Score:5, Informative)
Minix was written to give some "real-life" examples for a textbook on operating system design. The guy who wrote it wanted to keep it simple, so that it would be easier to understand.
Back when there wasn't a free *NIX, some people hacked on Minix to turn it into less of a toy and more of a real operating system. The biggest obstacle was licensing issues: Minix is owned by a book publisher, and you needed to deal with them if you wanted to do anything with Minix. If you just wanted to be legal to use Minix you could buy a copy of the book, but anything else (trying to distribute on CD-ROM for example) was pretty much impossible.
If Minix had been released under GPL, Linus might have simply written patches for it, rather than ginning up his own project. Linux would have likely never happened, and I would be using Minix to type this rather than Linux. This is nice history lesson about the importance of software licensing.
Anyway, between the *BSD family and Linux, we have plenty of *NIX operating systems to use; we don't need one more that is stuck back at the toy level and has a messy license. So people are not working on Minix to make it less toy-like anymore.
Because Minix is a toy, you can read the book and dive right in to the Minix code base. You can hack around with it and have a good time. As long as people still read the book, Minix will be a useful toy.
The efforts to grow Minix beyond its toy status are dead. Minix itself remains educational and fun.
steveha
Re:Minix is a toy (Score:3, Troll)
Re:Minix is a toy (Score:5, Informative)
Actually Minix was finally relicensed under a BSD-like license [cs.vu.nl] recently, albeit 10 years or so too late.
Re:Minix is a toy (Score:3, Funny)
And Linus wouldn't have to argue with AST. Look at my sig.
Minix is NOT dead. (Score:3, Interesting)
I am SO upset right now that you simply cannot imagine what I am going through. First of all, I use Minix on three of my four computers. Minix is certainly NOT dead, and I don't know why so many people think that it is. It's the most retarded thing I have ever heard of.
Re:Minix is NOT dead. (Score:5, Interesting)
It may not be Linux, but what the hell else am I gonna run on an IBM 5150? Besides, I keep telling myself that "someday" I'll learn how to code, then hack around with it.
Now hold it just a minute. (Score:3, Insightful)
Minix is frozen in time, and any of the old XFree86 sources that have ever worked with it will work with it forever. After a certain amount of debugging has taken place, one no longer needs to support software for an unchanging OS.
Does this mean... (Score:2, Funny)
Minix to Linux (Score:2, Funny)
I've still got an IBM PC w/ a 10 MB HD that has Minix installed. I keep meaning to get rid of it, but just can't quite bring myself to do so. Someday I'll do it and then I'll probably see the same model being appraised for a small fortune on Antiques Roadshow.
Minix very much alive (Score:2, Informative)
I'm going to be the only user! (Score:4, Funny)
Please, dont download it and ruin it for me.
As with BeOS, the M$ monopoly strikes again!!! (Score:3, Funny)
Not really :)
+1, Funny (Score:4, Funny)
"God is dead" - Nietzsche
"Nietzsche is dead" - God
can be:
"Linux is obsolete" - Andy Tannenbaum
"Minix is obsolete" - Linus Torvalds
Re:+1, Funny (Score:3, Funny)
"As a result of my occupation, I think I know a bit about where operating are going in the next decade or so."
"To me, writing a monolithic system in 1991 is a truly poor idea."
"... my guess is that the fraction of the 60 million existing PCs that are 386/486 machines as opposed to 8088/286/680x0 etc is small.
everyone will be running free GNU on their 200 MIPS, 64M SPARCstation-5."
Karma whoring (Score:5, Interesting)
Minix is far from dead... (Score:2, Insightful)
Aw man... (Score:5, Funny)
I just installed Minix on my XBox, and now I find out that it's dead.
You know... (Score:5, Funny)
WTF? (Score:3, Interesting)
I use awstats as my web statistics package, which happens to check if the OS is CP/M. I didn't know what to think when I saw that... maybe they werer just being thorough.
Well, once per month, I actually get a hit from someone using it. I mean... damn. I like vintage stuff and all (I just managed to get my Amiga 2000 up and running not so long ago, and I actually have a copy of Atari ST Minix) but how in the hell do you browse from CP/M?
I need to find this guy. Whether I should bitchslap him, or bow down in worship when I do, is something to debate
Note: I have a friend that likes to screw with me, telnets in and manually adds bizarre headers. But this isn't him, nor can I imagine someone else doing this for kicks on strangers' websites. I really am shocked and bewildered, in a way.
From the horse's mouth.. (Score:5, Interesting)
What do you think of Linux?
I would like to take this opportunity to thank Linus for producing it. Before there was Linux there was MINIX, which had a 40,000-person newsgroup, most of whom were sending me email every day. I was going crazy with the endless stream of new features people were sending me. I kept refusing them all because I wanted to keep MINIX small enough for my students to understand in one semester. My consistent refusal to add all these new features is what inspired Linus to write Linux. Both of us are now happy with the results. The only person who is perhaps not so happy is Bill Gates. I think this is a good thing.
The real truth about Linux (Score:3, Insightful)
However, there was this guy that came from the Northern cold, played a little with the cadaver and thought he could even overwhelm Frankenstein. For a few starry nights, he chunked, cutted, ripped Minix body into pieces to rejoin them into a new more perfect body, something that today reminds to some people a cute penguin...
That is probably one of the reasons for the harsh reaction of Tanenbaum on seeing the new monster and realizing that "it's alive". Well, Frankenstein was made from mortified human pieces, while Minix was dead from start and should have stayed in that status for long. So we may understand his shock seeing a living Linux.
Well this is half-humour half-stupidity but I tried to give another view of the story, in a more dummy way. Minix is a great system but, it was never intended to become another OS in the market. It is interesting that it gave birth to such an OS, but it never was in a position to concur with it. Minix and Linux have had always different purposes. The fact that it is being buried down, is not a problem on Minix but on the system. If one looks well around, he may see that the bottom line of development is dying. For the last years, there's been a fall on the creation and development of software infrastructure like OSes. So, this is not a sweet thing to see. It is a worrying signal that we may see some downgrade on specialists for the near future.
duh... (Score:3, Insightful)
If people were running XF86 on top of Minix, that would in my mind make them crazy. The way to work with minix nowadays is to run it inside e.g. VMware, not to run it as your primary OS. Minix was never intended to be anything but a toy.
But it is a good toy. I have just recently started to look at it, and it is very easy to learn from. And personally, I would rather see it stay that way. It's much better to have a simple educational toy, than a half-assed attempt at making it more complex, and more suitable for actual work. Because for actual work, there are already so many alternatives that are so much better: Windows, Linux, *BSD, Solaris, ...
I doubt many minix users really care about the dropped support. They are there for the kernel, and could care less about support for third-party programs.
And Tannenbaums strict control of the source have proven to be right. I can today download minix, and it still has some resemblance to what is described in the book. If Linus and the other good minix hackers had had their own way, minix would today look entirely different, and thus be useless for teaching.
Use of Minix (Score:3, Insightful)
While I believe Minix does prove to be a little silly a choice these days, it's still a nice look back into the old-style (Version 7??) UNIX, for people who just weren't born that long ago
Minix = great OS on old hardware/embedded (Score:4, Informative)
Since Minix has been put under the BSD license since April 2000, I wonder why nobody has made an effort yet to port it to embedded systems (PalmOS PDAs with Dragonball CPUs, for example, should be an ideal target). Minix should be much better suited for many embedded applications than the much more complex Linux kernel.
Minix is not for general use (Score:3, Informative)
Oh and just to make sure I get modded down as Troll...let us all remember this quote from Mr. Tanenbaum's books: "The desire for a free production (as opposed to educational) version of Minix led a Finnish student, Linux Torvalds, to write Linux. This system was developed on Minix and originally supported various Minix features (e.g., the Minix file system)". So yes if you are a Linux fan remember Linux's roots come from Minix so trashing Minix its tantamount to trashing your parents.
Minux still alive and well (Score:3, Insightful)
Al Woodhull's Minux box is still alive, well, and running here [hampshire.edu], in the third floor of Cole Science center at Hampshire College [hampshire.edu], in Amherst, MA. Al Woodhull is the co-author of the Minix operating system, and I believe that he still helps maintain it (occasionally).
The fact that it is still up and running an Apache server is a testament that it is still a functional operating system...more than just an educational toy. Here is a quote from the site:
So what if XF86 isn't being written for it? Does X make it a real OS? Is an OS not functional without X11R6? Does that make all of those X-less servers that I built and maintain toys?
Re:I had to say this... (Score:5, Insightful)
The name "GNU/Linux" is derived from the fact that almost all Linux distros make good use of the GNU tools. Minix makes no use of them.
Re:I had to say this... (Score:3, Insightful)
No, because Minix doesn't use the GNU toolset. Besides, I am thinking about installing Minix on my 486-without-FPU. Guess I need to go for an old version of X if I want it?
Re:I had to say this... (Score:2)