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The End Of Minix?
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.'"
since when were you required to run XF86 when you ran any Unix-based OS?
;)
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
this post makes me think of that BSD is dying stuff ;o
;)
Minux is dying! Clearly you can see that because its users don't use X windows!
Just had to
Minix makes an awesome unix OS to learn from. You all must agree that it doesn't have to be used as a production machine, it's really quite suited to use for teaching students.
If there have been no minix users since 1996, why did they wait six years to drop support?
To many, it does seem sad when things go. I remember the particular irony I felt recently when Dave Thomas, founder of Wendy's died. He was a fine person, but really he was just Dave, the guy we all saw on Wendy's commercials, the guy who took a whole day to pronounce the phrase Muchas Gracias. Minix is just a part of history. An important one, it can be easily argued, but one who's time has now come. With a lack of users, there's no motivation to develop the OS any further, so it's just logical progression. Yes, Minix is saying goodbye, but the world still spins. Besides, you couldn't play QuakeIII on it anyway, right slashdotters?
[este]
No.
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.
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.
The Raven
``Shouldn't it be called GNU/Minix?''
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?
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
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.
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
Even though Minix is long dead, there still is a good question: was a microkernel architecture better, or is Linux's monolithic kernel the right way to go?
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.
Just look at how much MSDOS software abounds on the net... how much C64 stuff there is (hundreds of megs amazingly considering disks were 160KB/side!).
.tar.gz file anybody can find and download to check out how operating systems work, or maybe for tiny nano-devices. Who knows?
Minix will be around for many years to come, if only as a
Maybe we should be using Minix/Linux as the correct name?
Subverting the meta-moderating system since 2003
The fact that they are no longer supporting Minix has no consequences whatsoever!
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.
Dog is my co-pilot.
Comparing Minux to Linux is like comparing a wagon to a Lexus. Minux was never designed to be a production O/S. It was designed to teach for students taking a first course in operating systems design.
Minix has always lived as Andrew T intended and probably will remain that way for quite some time. Minix is an EDUCATIONAL tool. It is meant to be gone over and understood within a semester in college. It excels at this purpose and many colleges use it to this end. It will die when all the colleges use something else. Just because hackers and tinkerers don't use it anymore doesn't mean it is dead.
You miss the same point that all the newly baptized Linux zealots miss when they read that seminal thread.
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.
If Mr. Tanenbaum had released Minix as GPL back during the birth of Linux...
There's some simularity here. No-one in the right mind these days would use pascal (in the non-Delphi sense) for anything like a serious purpose.
But as a first introduction to procedural code as a teaching language it's superb.
Ditto minix. No-ones gonna run it on a serious machine, but there's a lot to learn if you run it on crappy old hardware.
The statements about the death of Minix are out of the line. Minix is dead, dead from the very start. It is not a OS in the same way other OSes are and never was supposed to be such way. Minix is the crash dummy, the body of the anatomic room, the prototype A. Tanenbaum was not trying to make a real OS but a tool for students to learn how to create operating systems. And he kept this OS in such way.
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.
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.
Minix was a cute little UNIX introduction to a lot of people. An older version ran on the Amiga as well. It's the way I've made my transition from Amiga -> Minix -> Linux. This Minix never came with XFree86, and I believe it was quite a hassle to install if you really wanted it. Most people playing with Minix ever since Linux was ported to the Amiga, did it as a toy introduction to UNIX, and had no real need for X, anyway.
:-)
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
"We can confirm that Debian does *not* ship the version with the trojan horse. Our version predates it." [CA-2002-28]
all the Minix guy did was put forth his opinion that microkernels were the wave of the future
If you want proof that MicroKernels are neat, go and get QNX.
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
Al Woodhull's Minux box is still alive, well, and running here, in the third floor of Cole Science center at Hampshire College, 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?
-Turkey
Hmm. I'm sure a microkernel system will work for a UN*X-like OS. However, I really doubt that it's a good idea to implement yet another Unix-alike on a microkernel - it won't really make use of the kernel.
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.