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Andy Tanenbaum Releases Minix 3

Posted by Hemos on from the a-thousand-flowers-of-code-burst-forth dept.

Guillaume Pierre writes "Andy Tanenbaum announced the availability of the next version of the Minix operating system. "MINIX 3 is a new open-source operating system designed to be highly reliable and secure. This new OS is extremely small, with the part that runs in kernel mode under 4000 lines of executable code. The parts that run in user mode are divided into small modules, well insulated from one another. For example, each device driver runs as a separate user-mode process so a bug in a driver (by far the biggest source of bugs in any operating system), cannot bring down the entire OS. In fact, most of the time when a driver crashes it is automatically replaced without requiring any user intervention, without requiring rebooting, and without affecting running programs. These features, the tiny amount of kernel code, and other aspects greatly enhance system reliability."In case anyone wonders: yes, he still thinks that micro-kernels are more reliable than monolithic kernels ;-) Disclaimer: I am the chief architect of Globule, the experimental content-distribution network used to host www.minix3.org."

4 of 528 comments (clear)

  1. live-CD by DreamerFi · · Score: 5, Informative

    And you can try it out on your current PC - the download is a live-cd!

  2. Re:Honest question by shadowknot · · Score: 5, Informative

    Linus Torvalds was kind of inspired by minix to create a more useable and extensible Open Source OS and the original source for the Linux Kernel was written using a minix install. Check out the DVD of RevolutionOS for a detailed history.

  3. Re:Honest question by /ASCII · · Score: 5, Informative

    Linus was never Tannenbaums student. They met online in a classic flamewar where Tannenbaum delivered such classic comments as 'If you where my student, you wouldn't get a very high grade'. But Linux was born out of gripes Linus had with Minix.

    --
    Try out fish, the friendly interactive shell.
  4. Re:Honest question by TDRighteo · · Score: 5, Informative

    Ah, no, Linus was definately not Tanenbaum's student. Quite aside from the fact that Tanenbaum taught in the Netherlands and Linus studied in Finland, we couldn't have this quote if he was:

    I still maintain the point that designing a monolithic kernel in 1991 is a fundamental error. Be thankful you are not my student. You would not get a high grade for such a design :-)
    --- Andy Tanenbaum

    However, Linus did admit that at least one academic from his own university shared Tanenbaum's opinions, and thus he was unlikely to be getting high marks anyway. ;-)

    As has been pointed to before, you can find an abstract of the famous "Linus vs Tanenbaum" posts to comp.os.minix here.