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Domain: minix.org
Stories and comments across the archive that link to minix.org.
Comments · 8
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Re:VMs
I think id Games used to compile on SGIs. I know MS did some development on Xenix/i286 and Xenix/i386 (somewhere, there's an MS quote about how MS-DOS/Win is not suitable for serious development..hah). In fact, the i286 had a memory management unit, but the only OS (that I know of) which took full advantage of it was Xenix. Minix/i286 may have supported it to some extent, as well.
Some emulator pages....mac&ppc, simos (for SGI/IRIX5), DEC 10 and Big Iron, various DEC emulation, Apple Lisa, Z80 sim&development, yaze Z80, Apricot and Amstrad, bochs x86,
Other possibly helpful links:
emulators on freshmeat
OS kernels on freshmeat
OS's on freshmeat
bunches of old OS disk images
CP/M and MP/M
CP/M disks
Lisa Xenix
LisaOS
tandy xenix
elks and uclinux
freevms
freedos
Apple I (not II) development
reactos - winnt clone
MAME stuff and pinball Mame
info about tandy disk images
solaris minix
minix info and version 3
various free (as in beer and/or speech) OS list
The OS list at tunes.org -
Re:But..!?
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Re:So what OS are www.minix.org and minix3 running
Well that'll teach me to "save time" by not previewing.
craig@master ~ $ curl -s -I http://www.minix.org/|head -n 3
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Mon, 24 Oct 2005 23:32:32 GMT
Server: Apache-AdvancedExtranetServer/2.0.47 (Mandrake Linux/4mdk) mod_perl/1.99_09 Perl/v5.8.0 mod_ssl/2.0.47 OpenSSL/0.9.7b PHP/4.3.2
Interesting.
craig@master ~ $ curl -s -I http://www.minix3.org/|head -n 3
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Mon, 24 Oct 2005 23:33:29 GMT
Server: Apache/1.3.26 (Unix) PHP/4.4.0 mod_ssl/2.8.10 OpenSSL/0.9.6c
Pah!
craig@master ~ $ sudo nmap -P0 -v -v -v -n -TPolite -O www.minix3.org
[wait]
Device type: general purpose
Running: Linux 2.4.X|2.5.X|2.6.X
OS details: Linux 2.4.18 - 2.6.11
I guess nobody's ported apache to minix yet... -
So what OS are www.minix.org and minix3 running?
craig@master ~ $ curl -s -I http://www.minix.org/|head -n 3 HTTP/1.1 200 OK Date: Mon, 24 Oct 2005 23:32:32 GMT Server: Apache-AdvancedExtranetServer/2.0.47 (Mandrake Linux/4mdk) mod_perl/1.99_09 Perl/v5.8.0 mod_ssl/2.0.47 OpenSSL/0.9.7b PHP/4.3.2 Interesting. craig@master ~ $ curl -s -I http://www.minix3.org/|head -n 3 HTTP/1.1 200 OK Date: Mon, 24 Oct 2005 23:33:29 GMT Server: Apache/1.3.26 (Unix) PHP/4.4.0 mod_ssl/2.8.10 OpenSSL/0.9.6c Pah! craig@master ~ $ sudo nmap -P0 -v -v -v -n -TPolite -O www.minix3.org [wait]
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Re:Little Help?
Professor Andrew Tanenbaum is a professor who has written some great books. I'm very happy to have read read them. One of his books was Operatin g System Desgin and Implementation in which he describes operating systems with a toy, minimal, Unix-like operating system for the 8088 called Minix. It wasn't a really useful OS, but it was small enough to take a look at the code to any particular subsystem and learn how it worked. As an example of its mimilalism, it did have some hardware memory protection between processes, but did so with segment registers. That limited the size of each program to 64k.
Minix wasn't free or open source software. (ideas that were pretty much in their infancy) Tanenbaum sold it through his book publisher. Not for much, probably just enough to make it worth Prentice-Hall's time. Without the Internet as a cost effective distribution medium, someone had to take the orders and mail the disks. People loved tinkering with Minux, though. They ported it to other platforms, (Atari ST, Amiga, Sparc, 80306, etc.) They added to it and started distributing patches. Linus was using Minix-386 before he managed to get Linux to be self-hosting. In some reports, it was Linus' annoyance at having to pay for Minux that inspired him to make Linux free software.
Ken Brown, on the other hand, is someone whose name isn't very recognizable in technical circles. I'm tempted to say that he is a nobody, but maybe I just don't hang around the right circles. (Or on the other hand, maybe if I've never heard of him that means that I hang around the right circles.) I first read about the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution a couple of years ago when they published a paper questioning the security of free and open source software, and sold the paper in a through a system that allowed people to download the paper without purchasing it. Most of the links on their site are either links to articles from news sites about the institutes press releases, or links to papers that they promise will be ready soon.
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Minix
Off the top of my head, I think you should be able run Minix on it - however I'm not sure if X Windows comes with it by default, but I seem to recall someone saying it does work after a compile.
Also, FreeDOS would probably work.
Other than what's been already mentioned, I can't think of anything else that's free... Apparently you can still buy DR-DOS from someone and IBM still sells PC-DOS, but I have no idea where to get them...
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Ah, DOS...
That brings back memories. The article asks, "When was 270MB enough for anything lately?" When I had a 20MB drive on my hand-me-down Leading Edge XT - and that was big. Really though, this is good. I've been watching them for some time, and their project can only become more useful as Microsoft makes sure that it's impossible to get a DOS license. Open source developers are interestingly enough the only people protecting the world from obsolescence. It's a shame Linux isn't really installable in its modern incarnations on any machine older than a 486, but good old minix is still available at http://www.minix.org. Remember, this was Linus' base for linux. Minix, unlike DOS, is already fully TCP/IP ready... there is a good site describing how to get on the internet using an XT and Minix. Also, minix.org reminds me of the way linux.org looked about five years ago, pre-commercialization.
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It's not the license, it's the OS
I do not believe the GPL has anything at all to do with the rise of Linux. It has everything to do with Linus being at the right place, at the right time, with the right OS. Think back to 1991. MS-DOG was king, and the OS hobbyists were playing with Minix (a cute lil' free OS by Andy Tanenbaum). Minix was an okay cross-platform Unix-like OS. Linus wanted a great 80386 Unix. (Sigh. Nostalgia. Anyone else remember the Minix-Linux flame wars? The biggest criticisms of Linux were the monolithic kernel, its x86 platform dependency, and its lack of basic utility programs.) At the time, there was no really good free Unix for IA32. (I think at the time, Minix was really an 8086 OS -- can someone confirm that?) Linus produced the first good free IA32 Unix, and the rest (up to today) is history. I'd say Linux stole the show early on and has never had a serious competitor in its home field, x86 free Unix.