Google Groups no longer supports new Usenet posts or subscriptions. Historical content remains viewable.
Dismiss

The future of Minix is NOW!

75 views
Skip to first unread message

Luposian

unread,
Oct 24, 2005, 11:42:25 AM10/24/05
to
Some of you may remember me from a couple years ago, touting how I
believed Minix had more potential as a truly usable OS, rather than
JUST the "Educational OS" is was originally designed to be. I saw it's
potential and I tried to get others to see it. But ye would not.

Not even Kees Bot and his friend, who wrote Minix VMD (a variation of
Minix that *proved* Minix's potential was largely untapped), would heed
me. In fact, Kees Bot basically just avoided my messages (considering
me a troll) on the newsgroup, so he wouldn't have to listen to my
ranting. I finally just gave up and left.

Well, who's got egg on their face now? The very DESIGNER of Minix
(Prof. Tannebaum) has seen fit to create, what I would have called
"Modern Minix" back in the 2.0.3 days. A revision of Minix that takes
it into the realm of a desktop OS, not JUST an "educational OS".

Was my lone voice the one he heard and listened to or, is it just
*possible*, OTHERS were just as vehement in Minix's potential, except
they weren't so public about it. We may never know, but what I desired
to see has finally come to pass... it is only a matter of time and
people and desire, til Minix 3 be side-by-side with the likes of Linux
and BSD as far as OS' are concerned. And that day is long overdue...

Long live Minix... the OS that was ALWAYS more than for *just*
education!

Luposian

Thom Holwerda

unread,
Oct 24, 2005, 1:23:37 PM10/24/05
to
So, what are you proposing-- that someone starts a MINIX
desktop-oriented distribution? Would that someone possibly be you?

Let's start the MINIX-desktop-devel m-l! ;)

But seriously now-- do you think anyone would be interested in
starting, building, and maintaining such a distribution (once the port
of X is usable, of course)? I can assure you that if someone is
interested in doing this, OSNews would be open to providing the
nescesary press attention to draw in potential developers.


--
Thom Holwerda
---
Managing editor at http://www.osnews.com, exploring the future of
computing
---
Read my *all new* blog: http://cogscanthink.blogsome.com/
---
Google Talk: ThomHolwe...@gmail.com

Rui Maciel

unread,
Oct 24, 2005, 4:33:50 PM10/24/05
to
Thom Holwerda wrote:

> But seriously now-- do you think anyone would be interested in
> starting, building, and maintaining such a distribution (once the port
> of X is usable, of course)? I can assure you that if someone is
> interested in doing this, OSNews would be open to providing the
> nescesary press attention to draw in potential developers.

Maybe Debian is capable. If debian supports a GNU/Hurd port, what stops them
from supporting a Minix port?


Rui Maciel
--
Running Kubuntu 5.10 with KDE 3.4.3 and proud of it.
jabber:rui_m...@jabber.org

Cartman

unread,
Oct 24, 2005, 6:02:53 PM10/24/05
to
I agree with you, I believe that Minix has great potential.
In it's current form it is fast and stable, that is the foundation of a
great desktop OS (AmigaOS anyone?).
Cheers,
Nathan.


--
Usenet by www.trynsave.net - Visit it today for sales online in Australia

David Given

unread,
Oct 25, 2005, 7:42:44 AM10/25/05
to
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

In article <435d448a$0$2213$a729...@news.telepac.pt>,
Rui Maciel <rui.m...@gmail.com> writes:
[...]


> Maybe Debian is capable. If debian supports a GNU/Hurd port, what stops them
> from supporting a Minix port?

Absence of shared libraries, mostly. You can't duplicate the package
structure properly without them.

However, it'd be perfectly possible to build a Debian-like operating system
on top of Minix, using the same concepts but without actually *being*
Debian; as a first step, I got ipkg working on one of the Minix 3 betas.
(ipkg is a stripped-down, lightweight version of dpkg that doesn't have all
the ludicrous dependencies.) It worked pretty well.

- --
+- David Given --McQ-+
| d...@cowlark.com | Become immortal or die!
| (d...@tao-group.com) |
+- www.cowlark.com --+
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.2 (GNU/Linux)

iD8DBQFDXhnff9E0noFvlzgRApI2AJ9qpCr6+glc4mOkaaQDTK9x5v+5IQCeOXAB
EI2EG2ylluI0ibpqyPfhUlY=
=IdEL
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

Thom Holwerda

unread,
Oct 25, 2005, 2:06:08 PM10/25/05
to
I'd be really interested in such an OS, and I think many others with
me; I always wanted a good microkernel OS as a stable desktop-oriented
operating system. I've written an extensive review of QNX, testing it
thoroughly, but nobody within QNX Software Systems seems even a least
bit interested in pursueing that goal. Even though the basics are there
(QNX PhotonUI is absolutely amazing).

Do I think it's wise to 'simply' port X and throw GNOME/KDE on top of
MINIX? Personally, no. GNOME/KDE do not fit the MINIX philosophy-- not
at all.

It would be great if a Photon-like UI (Photon is designed with the same
design principles in mind as used when developing a microkernel) could
be developed for MINIX, but obviously that is a lot easier to say than
to do.

---
Thom Holwerda, managing editor of http://www.osnews.com

Otto Wyss

unread,
Oct 25, 2005, 4:05:44 PM10/25/05
to
Thom Holwerda <ThomHo...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Do I think it's wise to 'simply' port X and throw GNOME/KDE on top of
> MINIX? Personally, no. GNOME/KDE do not fit the MINIX philosophy-- not
> at all.
>

Well I think any OS should have a GUI these days but instead of X a
framebuffer solution would be much more fitting for Minix as I've
already said (see
http://groups.google.ch/group/comp.os.minix/browse_thread/thread/7a342f0
61b653bfc/aaa4ab756e4803ce?hl=de#aaa4ab756e4803ce").

O. Wyss

--
Development of frame buffer drivers: http://linux-fbdev.sf.net
Sample code snippets for wxWidgets: http://wxcode.sf.net
How to build well-designed applications: http://wyoguide.sf.net
Desktop with a consistent look and feel: http://wyodesktop.sf.net

Peter de Vroomen

unread,
Oct 27, 2005, 6:57:33 AM10/27/05
to
> Well, who's got egg on their face now?

Well, I guess this sentence alone proves you are *still* a troll and haven't
learned anything the past 10 years.

If you think you were so right, then why didn't you prove yourself? You've
had 10 years to build Minix into what you were dreaming of. The sourcecode
has allways been there, and there is no better tutorial to an OS *anywhere*.
If, after reading the book, you STILL can't change Minix into what you think
it should have been, then it's YOU that is the problem.

All blah and no perseverance.

Oh wait, that's the definition of a troll :+).

PeterV


Segin

unread,
Oct 28, 2005, 6:11:42 AM10/28/05
to
Otto Wyss wrote:

GNOME would not run on Minix -- each binary would have to be at LEAST 100MB
due to nu shared libs.

--
"...[Linux's] capacity to talk via any medium except smoke signals."
(By Dr. Greg Wettstein, Roger Maris Cancer Center)

Schweet

unread,
Oct 29, 2005, 10:33:02 AM10/29/05
to
To tell you the truth, I've been pondering over whether it'd be possible
to use minix for the desktop. But the designers should take apple's
approach, which is open-source, but company backed. I kinda think that
not much is being done to help end-users with Linux, the open-source
community seems to fight with itself a little too much.

Segin

unread,
Oct 30, 2005, 11:45:14 PM10/30/05
to
uhh, Ubuntu is Canonical (which is a company whose HQ is on the Isle of Man)

Schweet wrote:

--
Who wants to remember that escape-x-alt-control-left shift-b puts you into
super-edit-debug-compile mode?
(Discussion in comp.os.linux.misc on the intuitiveness of commands,
especially
Emacs.)

0 new messages