Some interesting tidbits on MINIX3 the last week. First, the MINIX3 team has set up a publicly accessible CVS server, running on a MINIX3 server (what else). You can access it via the ordinary CLI way, or via cvsweb. Secondly, the X11R6 release for MINIX3 has been updated and posted online. And lastly, MINIX3 now has a port of fltk, the fast light toolkit.
Now I see why so many DistroWatch readers were itching to get MINIX listed. They now have an X server and a port of xv. That pretty much makes it ready for the desktop!!
I though it was propostrous before, but now I can see why some people would benefit from a side-by-side comparison between MINIX and Ubuntu. I know I can’t make up my mind!
More seriously, though, MINIX3 is a great codebase to study if you have an interest in microkernel operating system design. It’s obviously very much a work in progress in a practical sense, but I guess they must have that 16-bit block addressing limitation worked out. There’s not much you can do these days with a filesystem that’s limited to 64MB.
one nice thing about minix is you can run it on a 286…
ok, so that doesnt have many practical aplications anymore.. but still, quite nice
You could use it as an embedded platform; for example, in the case of a check out; the current crop of UNISYS based check outs use a DOS based system, which, from my experience during university, is a complete POS when it comes to stability.
dude you’ve tottaly missed the point of Minix. This is almost entirely a research project where you get an OS small enough so that you can grasp the whole source code and experiment with things that linux would be too complicated for. Minix is not a desktop OS and has never strived to be one. It is not even a production ready OS. That said it is beyond me why you would want to run a CVS server on Minix or xorg. But like I said people experiment with things in Minix.
With Minix 3 they’re working hard on making it a viable operating system for general use; however they have yet to get a significant number of external help.
What is MINIX 3?
MINIX 3 is a small free UNIX clone designed for very high reliability. It is especially well-suited for low-end PCs, resource-constrained systems, and embedded applications. It is available with all the source code, which makes it well-suited to classroom or self study by people wanting to learn how an operating system works.
“””That pretty much makes it ready for the desktop!!”””
Well, add Dillo, Mutt and MatchBox to that and it actually would get a lot of people by.
But… people do tend to want more, more, more.
I could see a DSM (Damn Small Minux)) distro, porting DSL to the Minix kernel, in the not too distant future.
And then… who knows? Debian/GNU Minix? Oh, and just imagine the never ending flame wars^W^W technical debates between Minix and Hurd fans. (My kernel’s more micro than yours! No it isn’t! … )
I remember playing with Minix on my 10MHz XT compatible way back in the late 80’s when I was just learning about Unix. Good to see it’s still active. 🙂
I guess you haven’t been to any retail stores that use the PoS systems running Windows 2000 and Windows XP. Those are real PoS (other acronym) systems. Was at a Stitches in Vancouver where 1 register had locked up … which means none of the other registers would work until that one had rebooted. And since it was networked to the master server in the head office (which was having network issues) it took nearly 35 minutes for it to “reboot”.