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The End Of Minix?

Posted by timothy on from the i'm-shrinking-i'm-shrinking dept.

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.'"

6 of 401 comments (clear)

  1. "Minix is dying!"? by Mage+Powers · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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 ;)

  2. What I would like to know is... by messiertom · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If there have been no minix users since 1996, why did they wait six years to drop support?

  3. Re:I had to say this... by messiertom · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  4. Let's not forget ... by vlad_petric · · Score: 5, Insightful
    ... that, leaving aside the political debates, flamewars, etc, Minix was the operating system from which Linux was bootstrapped (IIRC the very first Linux versions were compiled under Minix, had the Minix fs "hardcoded" - way before VFS existed, etc.)

    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

  5. Re:so XFree86 = usage stattistics? by sg_oneill · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Actially the shame of this is Minix(VMD) and X make a seriously slim little X terminal on crappy old hardware.
    This is a shame, as I learned on Minix, and still have a spot in me heart for it.

    --
    Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
  6. Re:so XFree86 = usage stattistics? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "...why would I use it?"

    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.