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.

Comments

I wish the seven of them a good time

[gavron]

"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

Re:I wish the seven of them a good time

[phantomfive]

MINIX is obsolete.

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

Re:I wish the seven of them a good time

[I kan Spl]

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.

Obsolete

[Alwin Henseler]

MINIX is obsolete.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.

MinixCon

[timcullen2010]

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.

Wat?

[truck_soccer]

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