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Prof. Andy Tanenbaum Retires From Vrije University

Posted by timothy on from the congratulations-and-good-wishes dept.

When Linus Torvalds first announced his new operating system project ("just a hobby, won't be big and professional like gnu"), he aimed the announcement at users of Minix for a good reason: Minix (you can download the latest from the Minix home page) was the kind of OS that tinkerers could afford to look at, and it was intended as an educational tool. Minix's creator, Professor Andrew Stuart "Andy" Tanenbaum, described his academic-oriented microkernel OS as a hobby, too, in the now-famous online discussion with Linus and others. New submitter Thijssss (655388) writes with word that Tanenbaum, whose educational endeavors led indirectly to the birth of Linux, is finally retiring. "He has been at the Vrije Universiteit for 43 years, but everything must eventually end."

6 of 136 comments (clear)

  1. His epitaph in future years: by halivar · · Score: 5, Funny

    "Microkernels are still better, you little punk!" With an engraving of a shaking fist.

    1. Re:His epitaph in future years: by TeknoHog · · Score: 5, Funny

      The Linus vs. Tanenbaum dustup is from a simpler, more positive age.

      It's your father's microkernel. A more elegant weapon for a more civilized age.

      --
      Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
  2. A legend of OS design by sg_oneill · · Score: 5, Insightful

    A lot of people have the wrong impression about the good professor after the infamous exchange, but they miss that this is what academics do, and despite the flameyness of the exchange, Linus and Tanenbaum had a great deal of respect for each other. After all Linus was, for all purposes, Tanenbaums greatest student. I remember borrowing his book from UWA and getting the disks from the UWA computer club, following the instructions to get a functional minix up, then following his book to write a driver for my highly bugshit WANG (yes that was the brand name lol) hard drive controller. I learned more from that about how computers *really* work, than almost any thing I've ever learned. The difficulty of his book was notorious, probably the only books I found harder was Walter Pistons music theory book "Harmony", and Deleuzes philosophy text "Capitalism and Schizophrenia". And like those books, in its field Tanenbaums work shook the foundations of academia.

    Enjoy your retirement old man, you deserved it.

    --
    Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
  3. His other project -- electoral-vote.com by MAXOMENOS · · Score: 5, Informative

    So...Dr. Tannenbaum's other project is Electoral-vote.com (2), an election prediction site (and one of the first). Any clue what's going to happen to that?

    --
    Finding God in a Dog
  4. Class Act by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I remember when Microsoft paid Ken Brown throug the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution to do a hatchet job on Linus claiming that Linux was stolen from MINIX. Now Tanenbaum, who has criticized the Linux kernel design and had some spirited exchanges with Linus, could have just said nothing and let Linus fend the FUD off by himself, but instead he stepped up and did the honorable thing by decimating Brown's arguments that Linus could have come up with the Linux kernel in just a year and his competency as a researcher/writer.

    http://www.cs.vu.nl/~ast/brown/
    http://www.cs.vu.nl/~ast/brown/rebuttal/

  5. Re:"Vrije University"? by RyuuzakiTetsuya · · Score: 5, Funny

    Split it down the middle. GNUversity

    --
    Non impediti ratione cogitationus.