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.'"

Comments

Re:Minux is a teaching OS

[J4]

That -almost- makes me want to mod. Almost.

Re:so XFree86 = usage stattistics?

[AussieGeek]

So how are you supposed to view your porn ??? HEY ??? That IS the whole point of the web isnt it ? Otherwise, why else would all sites lead to porn ?

Re:Hmmm...

[Tassach]

I really wish this GNU/Linux crap would go away. Yes, there's GNU code in linux distros. But there's a hell of a lot of other groups' code in there too. The only really indispensible piece of GNU software in the typical Linux distro is gcc, for the simple reason that a whole lot of Free code requires GCC's non-ANSI C/C++ extensions (the kernel for one) and won't compile on an ANSI standard C compiler. However, a compiler does not an operating system make. Other than the compiler and it's add-ons (Bison, Flex, etc), the other big GNU contribution is the basic command line tool set: bash, man, tar, grep, sed, ls, awk, and so forth. Those are more easily replacable - it would be pretty straightforward to port the *BSD versions of those commands to run on linux. These tools are important for system usability, sure, but they're not the applications that make Linux a worthwhile system. Looking at the stuff a user actually cares about -- the stuff that lets him get stuff done -- most of it's not coming from the FSF (hell, much of it isn't even GPL):

• The kernel (yes, it uses the GPL, but not owned by the FSF)
• XFree86 - not GNU
• Apache - not GNU either
• Sendmail
• BIND
• OpenSSL & OpenSSH
• KDE, KOffice, and so forth
• vim
• (Vixie) Cron
• xinetd
• samba
• and the list goes on...

Clearly, there is *FAR* more non-FSF code that comprises the system people call "Linux" than there is code that comes from the FSF. Yes, Linux owes the FSF a large amount of credit for it's success -- but no more so than any of the dozens of other groups out there that make Free / Open Source software. Calling it GNU/Linux devalues the contributions other groups make. If you want to be fair, call it GNU/XFree86/Apache/Samba/Sendmail/.../Linux.