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MINIX 3.2 Released With Some Major Changes
An anonymous reader writes "MINIX 3.2.0 was released today (alternative announcement). Lots of code has been pulled in from NetBSD, replacing libc, much of the userspace and the bootloader. This should allow much more software to be ported easily (using the pkgsrc infrastructure which was previously adopted) while retaining the microkernel architecture. Also Clang is now used as a default compiler and ELF as the default binary format, which should allow MINIX to be ported to other architectures in the near future (in fact, they are currently looking to hire someone with embedded systems experience to port MINIX to ARM). A live CD is available."
The big highlight is the new NetBSD based userland — it replaces the incredibly old fashioned and limited Minix userland. There's even experimental SMP support. Topping it all off, the project switched over to git which would make getting involved in development a bit easier for the casual hacker.
I see an interesting convergence of some technologies happening. clang is on the roadmap for several BSDs and now is default on Minix. NetBSD tools were pulled in which are also used in part on several other systems. The Minix folks will probably upstream fixes to NetBSD as well as make improvements to llvm.
It's great to see alternatives to GNU tools gaining ground. It's the only logical choice for embedded systems due to licensing. We're going to need to step up our game and make our own tools with threats like Wayland coming.
MidnightBSD: The BSD for Everyone
Seconded. Aside from a purely nostalgic standpoint, not sure how relevant MINIX is in this day and age, given the hardware and OS choices available. Still, I guess people have the right to work on whatever the hell they want to.
That was in 1992. Get a life.
Seriously, though, Torvalds vs Tanenbaum is so 20th century.
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
Remember it for what it was originally made for... an operating system to learn from while coding.
You might not remember those days, but when you have a working operating system that is minimal in code size, it's easier to grasp.
I'm just a little disoriented by the need to advance it, unless it's a minimal codebase of the NetBSD variety. Then again, they did say it was "pulled" from NetBSD, so that'd mean in my mind it's not minimal... which nullifies that. ... and we're back to square one.
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Git is a userspace application, Tanenbaum and Torvalds disagree about the best way to design a kernel, that's a totally different topic..
That's 20th century thinking, you dinosaur. In the 21st century, you cannot disagree with someone without hating them and everything they stand for. I am now obliged to call you an idiot for disagreeing with me, or in modern parlance: "being wrong". w0t??? U iz a bag of FAIL!!!! I bet you're a communist who votes for pinkos!!!
Welcome to the Century of the Misanthrope.
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
Perhaps it's being used for educational purposes. Linux is a bit huge to use as a learning tool for various aspects of how operating systems work. I speculate that pulling in code from NetBSD seems to make sense to provide more up-to-date examples of modern OS architecture issues.
MINIX on ARM will be very interesting if it happens. As I gather the footprint will be much smaller compared to Linux!
Will it? You are probably comparing Minix to the bloated x86 Linux distributions. ARM Linux is much smaller
ARM Linux is much smaller
The Linux kernel itself usually isn't. The C libraries that come with the distributions ARM board vendors often bundle with their hardware are typically smaller as they don't usually use glibc (or a derivative of it).
training tool
Its an educational tool not a training tool. Education is learning how stuff works, training is votech. Almost no one in the world will ever be hired because of minix on a resume. It is helpful for learning how OS work. Another way to put it is education gives you something interesting to think about, makes life worth living. Training gives you a way to make money to afford the contemplative life of an educated person. Its an educational tool.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Embedded dists tend to use uClibc + BusyBox. Android uses a BSD user-land with a C runtime implementing a subset of Posix called BIONIC. The kernel would be compiled down to strip out superfluous drivers, filesystems, subsystems and so on.
I think it's evolving the userspace side - while the Minix is the kernel side. The userspace of Minix suffered and gets crufty as people can't use what they already know since the Minix userspace starts looking a little barren.
There are lots of teaching operating systems out there. Most are just applications that run on another OS to teach basic concepts like multithreading, locking and such. Minix appears to be the end goal - an OS that can be taught running on real hardware. A userspace revamp to make it feel modern and not a toy. And being able to go and compile some program you wrote on an OS you're tinkering with can trigger excitement among students.
And there's probably a ton of OS research going on with Minix as well, and not having to put up with limitations on tools because the userspace can't run them is helpful.
So you could use them on a desktop but the question is why in most cases since you would have the CPU and memory to support the fullblown libs. I doubt uClibc would compile against desktop style applications and most dists would expect full blown GNU tools to function. You'd probably have to roll your own dist for that.
I respect Minix for its attempt at doing something different from the monolithic OSs we almost invariably use.
Linux and its ilk are very powerful, but they're not the only way to solve problems. Keep up the good work!
...laura
Of the various microkernels that ever existed @ different times, Mach 3 was less than satisfactory, Chorus ended up digested by Sun, and Amoeba itself today stands discontinued. L4 is a 2nd generation microkernel that has been tried out in some projects, including a Linux project called L4Linux as well as an OS/2 successor called OSfree. There are some other microkernels, such as Coyotos & Viengoos that have in the past been tried by the Hurd project.
I'd think that something like Minix 3.0 (not 3.2) would be a good microkernel to base Hurd on. Given the licensing differences, the Hurd guys may need to fork Minix anyway in order to get a microkernel that has everything that Hurd needs. If they get that, they can then continue on the rest of the project, and finally have the GNU's own kernel (which ain't Linux).
On another note, I wonder why the Minix guys chose the NetBSD userland, since NetBSD is the least used BSD among the big 3. They could have simply gone w/ FreeBSD, which would have given them a range of targeting options, allowing them to borrow from PC-BSD for netbooks, pFSense for routers/firewalls, FreeNAS for storage, and so on.
And finally, I do hope they get an arm version sometime. Another suggestion - they might want to get a Raspberry Pi and port the ARM Minix to that platform, making it the target platform for this initially.