Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
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});
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.
Yeah, we're still out here. From what I can gather from the MINIX-L list, it has more of a following outside the US. There seem to be few folks in the Middle East and Southeast Asia using it. Still not a large number in any case.
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.
the no
Here's the obligatory link to Tanenbaum's 1992 "Linux is obsolete" post.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
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.