Question about Minix book

Andrew Ebling

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May 28, 2006, 3:16:13 PM5/28/06

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Is Andrew Tanenbaum's book on Minix useful for people who are trying to
get up to speed with using Minix, rather than understanding how it works
internally or modifying it/contributing to it?

The descriptions on Amazon/Prentice Hall don't really make it clear.

thanks,

Andrew

Michael Black

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May 28, 2006, 7:11:55 PM5/28/06

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When I've glanced at the copy (I think the earlier edition) of the one
I got at a used book sale, it didn't seem to have much about using it,
indeed I don't recall seeing anything.

Remember, Minix was created to teach about the design of operating systems,
and the real reason it got out of the classroom was because at the time it
was useful on real computers, at a time when Unix cost way too much (and
was still requiring more hardware than many could afford and Linux
was yet to come. The actual operating system was an adjunct to the book,
the real example to go with the teaching.

Michael

The Grue - James T. Sprinkle

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May 30, 2006, 11:03:48 AM5/30/06

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"Andrew Ebling" <slashdev...@andyebling.plus.com> wrote in message
news:4479f6fe$0$18222$ed26...@ptn-nntp-reader01.plus.net...

Hey Andrew! If you want to know what makes Minix work, buy the book. If
you want to use Minix as an OS, find a good Unix tutorial or book. Also,
there are the man pages that will explain the commands.

The Grue

The Grue - James T. Sprinkle

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Jun 1, 2006, 3:45:16 PM6/1/06

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I'm not answering my own post, but this has captured my interest. What, in
the Minix community's opinion, would "a second Minix book" include? I might
be interested in tackling a project such as this or creating guides if there
is interest in such a thing. Any ideas?

The Grue - James T. Sprinkle

Mat

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Jun 2, 2006, 4:26:55 AM6/2/06

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I'd suggest to start up with a Wiki-Book about MINIX.

Michael Black

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Jun 2, 2006, 10:44:11 AM6/2/06

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That's not a suggestion at all.

"Wiki" may be a solution to a problem, but he wants to know what sort
of things people would want to see in a supplementary book.

What I'm finding lately is that people are focusing too much on how
you can do things instead of doing the things in the first place.

A decade ago, I know small groups would say "it's too technical"
when approaching the internet. But the only point they needed to
deal with was whether or not it could or would improve their ability
to reach the public. ONce that happened, the issues of how to do
it would fall into place. But it didn't so too often they either
didn't make use of the internet, or had a webpage made by some guy
that didn't reflect the group, and couldn't be updated because that
guy didn't put hooks into the site to make it easy for the group.

Now in a flash, everyone has blogs, which is a means of getting
to the end faster than in the past. But for many, the end surves no
purpose, because they have no driving reason for a blog, other than
because everyone is doing it now, and it's so easy.

Same with Wikie. One of the local Linux groups last year was trying
and tossing away a whole variety of "new" things on the internet,
yet not getting their meeting notices out into public view.

The new gadgetry (be it hardware and software) means nothing unless
it's actually being used for something beyond it's newness.
Michael

Message has been deleted

awoo...@hampshire.edu

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Jun 3, 2006, 9:10:33 AM6/3/06

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all mail refused <elvis...@notatla.org.uk> wrote:
> On 2006-06-02, Michael Black <et...@FreeNet.Carleton.CA> wrote:

> I suggest:
> - How to write (and test) Minix device drivers
> - How to do kernel-grovelly things in the style of top, ps, netstat ...

> I know you can read sources of existing stuff and try to fill in the
> gaps but this is somewhere a partially-predigested write-up may help.

A place you might start looking for ideas is the Minix Course Sites
page at http://minix1.woodhull.com/teaching/courses.html.

On this page I have collected links to a number of sites created to
support college/university-level OS courses that use Minix. Some of
these sites may have outlines of student assignments.

Mat

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Jun 6, 2006, 8:50:26 AM6/6/06

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Please don't get me wrong. I'm not suggesting a wiki because it's hip.
I think it is a good way to work on a book in a collaborative and
synchronized way. Furthermore, I don't want to install one of those
fan-platforms that dissapear after one year. JTS was asking for ideas -
so here it is.

People have lots of questions concerning Minix. In most cases they get
a reply like 'go there or there'. It seems like there's no 'general
place' to inform yourself about concepts, implementation, installation,
development, etc. Reading some pages here and there is not sufficient
since it consumes a lot of time and is in most cases not actually the
point one was looking for. In other words: Minix was made for
education. Do you realy think it is a good didactical idea to let
people seek for documents all over the web?

Threrefore (once again), let us develop a free book about Minix (not
Unix, not Linux, not Posix) including it's own vision, concepts, usage,
etc. Target group: students, tutors, developers, 'users'. Where to
place it? My recommendation: http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Main_Page

Mat

riche

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Jun 6, 2006, 10:01:40 AM6/6/06

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I agree. I think if people collaborate on a book that is more
user-level it will be beneficial to everyone.

ast

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Jun 11, 2006, 6:03:38 PM6/11/06

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riche wrote:

> I agree. I think if people collaborate on a book that is more
> user-level it will be beneficial to everyone.

My guess is that the MINIX market is too small to get a commercial
publisher interested in a book about how to use it. Some day that
might change, but not now. As to extending the current book, you don't
think 1062 pages is enough?

On the other hand, a wiki or a free online book, with people writing
sections on material about which they are knowledgeable might work
well. As I recall, FreeBSD has something like that.

Andy Tanenbaum

Andrew Reilly

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Jun 13, 2006, 3:26:03 AM6/13/06

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On Sun, 11 Jun 2006 15:03:38 -0700, ast wrote:
> On the other hand, a wiki or a free online book, with people writing
> sections on material about which they are knowledgeable might work
> well. As I recall, FreeBSD has something like that.

I don't think that FreeBSD's handbook and FAQ are wikis, although the
effect is much the same, from sufficient distance. I think that the
handbook is probably what you're thinking of:
http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/index.html.
In fact they pre-date wikis by a considerable margin. They're just
documents maintained by the document (sub)project, and user contributions
are submitted through send-pr or by people who already have a commit-bit.

Cheers,

--
Andrew

Mat

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Jun 13, 2006, 12:06:50 PM6/13/06

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To all of you who would like to contribute something: Feel free to edit
the new wiki-book at
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikibooks:Requested_books#Computer_science_bookshelf

Mat

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Jun 13, 2006, 12:16:19 PM6/13/06

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Or you may want to use this link: http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/MINIX
which is more convenient.