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Andrew Tanenbaum Announces MINIXcon (minix3.org)

LichtSpektren writes: Andrew Tanenbaum, author of MINIX, writes: 'MINIX has been around now for about 30 years so it is (finally) time for the MINIXers to have a conference to get together, just as Linuxers and BSDers have been doing for a long time. The idea is to exchange ideas and experiences among MINIX 3 developers and users as well as discussing possible paths forward now that the ERC funding is over. Future developments will now be done like in any other volunteer-based open-source project. Increasing community involvement is a key issue here. Attend or give a presentation.' The con will be held on 1 February 2016 at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

12 of 104 comments (clear)

  1. I wish the seven of them a good time by gavron · · Score: 4, Funny

    "The idea is to exchange ideas and experiences among MINIX 3 developers and users..."

    I wish all seven of them have a good time exchanging ideas and experiences.
    Perhaps they could use email.
    You know.
    Like through a linux server.
    Because.
    That's how it works.

    "If the OSI developers are emailing each other, it's over TCP/IP" -- Steven Belovin, before you were born
    "If the Minix developers[sic] are emailing each other, it's on Linux systems" -- me

    Ehud

    1. Re:I wish the seven of them a good time by volkerdi · · Score: 2, Funny

      MINIX is obsolete.

    2. Re:I wish the seven of them a good time by TWX · · Score: 2

      hmmm. Low UID, and "volkerdi" would be a good way to represent a username on a system that might have had an eight-character username limitation at some point. Is this Patrick Volkerding of Slackware?

      To the point though, even if MINIX is obsolete, obsolesecence could simply be that the features needed are not implemented. Granted, the entire framework could be poor to the point that adding on components does not help, but if the framework is solid then even something obsolete might be able to develop past its obsolescence.

      I mention this because a lot of people are upset by some development in the Linux world with Lennart Poettering's contributions. These people might be as ripe to pick-off from Linux as they were to pick-off from BSD back when Linux was young.

      --
      Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
    3. Re:I wish the seven of them a good time by slashdice · · Score: 2

      Linus Benedick Torvalds disagrees with you.

      Notes for linux release 0.01

      This is a free minix-like kernel for i386(+) based AT-machines. ... Thus you currently need minix to bootstrap the system. ... The linux kernel has been made under minix, and it was my original idea to make it binary compatible with minix. ... As already mentioned, the linux FS is the same as in minix. This makes crosscompiling from minix easy, and means you can mount a linux partition from minix

      --
      Copyright (c) 1990 - 2014 Dice. All rights reserved. Use of this comment is subject to certain Terms and Conditions.
    4. Re:I wish the seven of them a good time by phantomfive · · Score: 3, Informative

      MINIX is obsolete.

      Yeah, no kidding, that's why they made a new version. Try to keep up.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    5. Re:I wish the seven of them a good time by I+kan+Spl · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Minix is an amazing learning OS.

      Back in university, we were required to write a simple scheduler, a virtual memory (paging to disk) subsystem, and a FAT16 filesystem on top of a stripped down Minix kernel.

      While that would technically be possible with Linux as well, the reality is that the Linux kernel base is so amazingly huge that a third year university student with no kernel experience has little hope of doing such a set of projects in a single quarter long course.

      --
      My UID is prime and so is this number: 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0.
  2. Minix 3 is really interesting. by LWATCDR · · Score: 2

    I hope that Minix 3 gets more interest. When I have time I really want to see if I can use it for NAS.

    --
    See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
  3. Announcement by hawguy · · Score: 2

    Would it really have been so hard to link to the announcement in the summary:

    http://www.minix3.org/conferen...

  4. Obsolete by Alwin+Henseler · · Score: 5, Insightful

    MINIX is obsolete.

    Even if assuming that's the case: okay, so what? Things that are considered 'obsolete' are used in many places, every day, doing their thing. Often better than if done by a modern 'equivalent'.

    From what I've read, MINIX has some unique features that mainstream OS'es don't have. For that reason alone there's a place for it. And it's useful as a way to learn the inner workings of an OS. Not as big and complex as an OS that supports everything under the sun.

    Still not good enough hey? How about as a research vehicle? To try some new concepts that haven't been tried elsewhere. Do things that have been done elsewhere just a little different, and see how that works. Or just for the fun of it.

    Especially us /. users should applaud and appreciate projects like this. There used to be a time when it seemed as if every company were working on some OS or programming language of their own. When hobbyists where beating bare metal of their PC's in assembly, even up to a GUI or 3D games. These days... not so much. Most software news these days is new releases of existing software. New versions of existing operating systems. Some new way to make existing software X work with existing software Y. Projects like MINIX that are still developed (even if slowly) are few and far between.

    Last but not least: if you're not interested: fine, that's OKAY. But no reason to mock an interesting project simply because it's not your cup of tea.

  5. MinixCon by timcullen2010 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The children on this thread are hilarious. So what if people want to get together and talk about a project that interests them but may not interest you. Why do you care? Keep using Linux if thats what you prefer but at least grow up enough to not be but-hurt when other people enjoy working with something else.

  6. Re:Argument's silver anniversary by T.E.D. · · Score: 2

    Yes, I say he "lost" in the court of public opinion, because the rough gist of his initial argument was that Linux was going nowhere due to its Kernel design, and Linux and Minix had very different trajectories than this argument would have predicted. How much of that was due to kernel design is debatable, but the argument that Linux was "obsolete" 23 years ago certainly looks silly now.

    If one digs into the details of the debate, not only were a lot of Tannebaum's detailed points quite correct, but Linus wasn't even arguing against them at the time. He was just arguing that for what he was trying to accomplish, Linux's design was better. So you could say they were both right on the details, but it isn't the details that made the argument famous.

  7. Wat? by truck_soccer · · Score: 3, Funny

    never heard of it. I'm gnu to this stuff.