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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.'"
You know, considering that Minix made Linus Torvalds want to write his own OS, is that really much of a compliment to Minix? I'm surprised it still had that support. But you know, without Minix, you have to wonder if we'd have anything like GNU/Linux right now.
Isn't it more of an educational tool these days, rather than a practical OS? I think every CS student had to buy Tanenbaum's book for their OS class. I think it's more of a prototypical UNIX that's good for studying how OS's actually work.
since when were you required to run XF86 when you ran any Unix-based OS?
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?
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Moderation Totals: Wrong=2, Stupid=3, Total=5.
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".
sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
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.
Codeala - Just another mindless drone
Do you think my old 286 running Minix could handle X well enough to be a remote x terminal? If it could, it might be possible for me to use it to login to the Solaris servers here at school, so I can work on my computer programming projects a bit easier.
I believe in microkernels. Just look at QNX. Ever tried to make a decent Linux boot floppy? It's hard, and would be easier if the kernel were more modular. Fortunately, it is moving in that direction. The MINIX file system is still available, and makes a very good choice for floopies: full file permissions and very little space wasted. ext2 takes up half the floppy and reiserfs doesn't even fit on it. MINIX may be dead as a production system, but its legacy lives on, and it's still good for OS courses, which is what it was made for.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
the Professor the made Minix does not like Linus to much since Linux took off....Linus tried to get him to sign a book that the proffesor wrote, the dude snubed him and has made comments since about his oppinion of Linux :-)
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
and it only took microkernels 10 years plus to be usable on modern hardware..and it's not like monolithic kernels are not going to advance
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.
Give me a break. I know you're all Linus fanboys ("yes, Mr. Torvalds!" "excellent idea, Mr. Torvalds" "That's a great tie, Mr. Torvalds"), but all the Minix guy did was put forth his opinion that microkernels were the wave of the future, and then had that turned into a personal thing. Read the exchange
Because it's relatively simple. Have you ever compared Linus's original .99 version (the first he released publically, or anyway the first that I can find) with a modern 2.5 kernel? It's orders-of-magnitude more complex. Minix was designed to follow academic operating system principles, above practical issues such as performance. Because of that, it was easy to understand and teach.
Okay, so it's not finished, but it's somewhat useable, especially on older 32 bit hardware. Looking through dselect, there's quite a few apps available for it. The machine I'm using it on is a bit flaky (think there's a mobo/mem problem, because Linux actually crashes on it, too). I've got another machine sitting around that I'm going to try it on.
:-)
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.
Red Hat released a poster with the source to Linux Kernel V 0.0.1
It is a rather small amount of code.
>Do you think my old 286 running Minix could handle X well enough to be a remote x terminal?
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...
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
It is much easier to learn from a smaller system (minix) than a large system (linux). In fact, the minix book (Operating Systems: Design and Implementation) is very well written and the source code is very manageable for students. Also the fact that Linux is ever changing makes the learning and teaching even more difficult.
In addition, micro-kernel is not bad. Just because Linux is one way doesn't mean it's the only or even the best way. Solaris has a more mature operating system and it is micro-kernel based. NT too, but that's different story.
Here's the obligatory link to Tanenbaum's 1992 "Linux is obsolete" post.
--
Mod up a post Rob doesn't like and you'll never mod again
GNU/Minix
Let's get some facts. Is that true or not? Does Minix, like Linux, use the entire GNU suite of tools?
Do you care about the security of your wireless mouse?
irrelevant, but the problem with microkernels is the lack of support for components and object orientation at the CPU level.
Passing a message to a component should be at assembly level as easy as writing 'component.method(params)' in C++ or Java.
The CPU then should have to work out the details of how to switch contexts.
Putting operations in hardware rather than software doesn't mean that there will be fewer of them or that they will take significantly less time.
OO simply has a lot of overhead, which is often the price paid for a clear conceptual model.
Modern microkernels are in practice a lot more similar to monolithic kernels in their system calling and kernel inter-server communications.
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.
You think that's funny.
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.
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.
Except for the issue that eliminating sex meant that the commune wouldn't last but a single genration.
BTW: The Farm in Tennessee is still going strong with 200 members. So is Twin Oaks, a community based on B.F. Skinners ideas in Walden 2. Twin Oaks has 100 members. East Wind in Missouri has 85 members.
FreeSpeech.org
Morever, those sites that are `graphical only' quite often suck even with a graphical browser (you know the sort, each page a single GIF, or composed entirely of a giant flash animation; yuck!).
:)
First, I agree.
Second, you're wrong.
It is true that it is sucky to create a site that can only be viewed by a graphical browser. But keep in mind that the bare minimal browsers many people design web sites for are indeed graphical, and most people use the web as their medium precisely because of its graphicality. Assuming, of course, "graphicality" is a word. They may SUCK with a graphical browser, but at least the content they are trying to present is VIEWABLE with one.
A person in a position to say "I use Lynx for all my web browsing needs, I don't need a graphical interface -- all the sites that are nothing but graphics suck" is right in regards to the design of those sites -- they suck -- and obviously has the luxury of picking and choosing the design qualities of the websites from which he gets his information. Those who use the web as a resource do not often have that luxury, so they need a browser that is capable of delivering, if not all, then MOST of that information. This goes beyond graphics and includes browsers (such as, sadly, my beloved OmniWeb) that mangle CSS in ways that make some content unviewable.
In short, yes, designers should design for Lynx. I try to make my site Lynx-friendly, even though it is a webcomic and makes absolutely no sense to view it in Lynx. But the fact remains that extant websites are unlikely to have been designed with text browsers in mind, so graphics do come in handy.
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