Death of Minix 3

[sealp...@gmail.com]

It has been declared that Minix 3 is discontinued on Distrowatch.

I wonder if the statement is true or not?

[Thomas Cort]

There have been no new releases since 2014. The last development snapshot was over 5 years ago in May 2017. I don't know of anyone doing development at this time. There isn't a lot of discussion in the minix3 google groups besides questions about the future of Minix and if it's dead or not. The source code, website, and install media images are available and still work.

TC

[stux...@gmail.com]

To quote distrowatch news (emphasis mine):

There have been no new releases of the MINIX operating system for about nine years. While development has continued, with a few development snapshots published since 2014, serious work on the MINIX microkernel and userland tools has mostly lost momentum. OSNews reports on the status of the project: "It seems like MINIX 3 has pretty much stalled, and digging through the Google Groups group isn't of much help either. There's certainly interest in the platform, but even the people frequenting the list state while MINIX 3 isn't dead, because open source projects technically rarely die, it is in a 'coma', in a post from 2021. There's been various proposals for improvements or new directions - notably this very detailed one - but nothing has come of them. It probably does not help that MINIX's creator and steward, Andy Tanenbaum, retired in 2014 from VU University, my alma mater, where he and a team of doctoral students worked on MINIX 3 for a long time."

The oswatch article linked above does go on to day:

The fact of the matter is that MINIX 3’s development has halted, and this effectively means that MINIX is, for all intents and purposes, dead. With the last commit being almost five years old, even simply picking up where development left off would be a big undertaking, and would require some seriously bright minds and dedication. I’d love for it to happen, but I have my doubts.

Distrowatch itself calls it discontinued.  So calling it "dead" is a matter of opinion.  As stated in the above snippets, the project can be revived at any time.  But it does require more effort as years go by.  But it requires effort either way.  As I've mentioned before, it's the lack of appropriate personnel and resources that has been detrimental to the revival of this project.  I, myself have wanted to contribute, but real life has taken unfortunately priority.  It doesn't mean I've given up, but I am more aware now of the personal and technical hurdles.

-stux

On Monday, June 26, 2023 at 4:12:29 AM UTC-4 sealp...@gmail.com wrote:

[Peter Shkenev]

Hello,

Minix is dead unless you have some patches with you.

I do, so I don't consider it totally dead.

---
Best regards,
Peter

[sealp...@gmail.com]

I have a question. Which assembler is best to write a bootloader for Minix 3?

[stux...@gmail.com]

This particular question probably deserves a separate thread and it should be answered there.  At best, if you're rolling your own bootloader, regardless of OS, I'd suggest starting with checking out this OSDev page:

• https://wiki.osdev.org/Rolling_Your_Own_Bootloader
  

-stux

[Justin Handville]

To further stux's comments, not only was the last commit from five years ago, but the architecture it supports -- 32-bit x86 and an incomplete old ARM port -- can only be reliably run on virtual machines. Not only would it require some bright minds and dedication to resurrect Minix 3, but the work would require a significant overhaul if the goal was to bring it to modern hardware. While I can only guess at the motivations for the original developers dropping off, I don't think that there is much hope of new developers finding motivation to continue this project, unless there is a significant source of funding to motivate them or a specific paying project in mind.

My recommendation for those who love Minix 3 would be to just enshrine the current project. Learn from it. Start fresh with a new project that is inspired from AST's work, but is designed from the beginning to work with modern hardware. While it is certainly possible to lift and shift Minix 3 to this hardware, I think it's probably best to use this code as a study tool. The book kernel was 5000 lines of code. A similar sized microkernel could be designed with modern hardware in mind, with study. Study current operating system implementations -- to discover what kernel devs for these other OSes figured out about how to best use modern hardware -- and study the data sheets. Find the right general model for this modern microkernel -- which will probably be 80% similar to Minix 3 -- and build toward that.

What this looks like will ultimately depend on the goals of that project. I don't recommend building it just to build it. Instead, solve a problem. For instance, one idea that interests me is how microkernel architecture could be used to enhance security. We've seen some of this explored with seL4. One thing that made Minix -- and Minix 3 -- special to me was the didactic nature of the OS. While hacking on seL4 is approachable for someone with experience, it is less approachable for someone looking to learn this stuff. Instead, if I were to approach a project like this, I'd set out to write a spiritual successor to the Minix 3 book. The focus of that book wouldn't be OS design, as the Minix 3 book covers that well. It would be how to design a safe cross-platform and multicore OS in a proof assistant like Coq or Lean 4, and extract a sound implementation to C and machine code.

Minix 3 may be Schrödinger's project: in a coma, dead, soon to be revived, etc. But, as inspiration for a fork, it's useful today. As a study tool, it's useful today.

- Justin

[Murray Smith]

For my recent experience with 3.4.0 is that progress on minix had (has) proceeded faster than the website, until activity on both had/has "stoped", the lack of documentation for things like drivers maybe a roadblock to future activity.

Murray.

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