http://www.osnews.com/story/15960/Introduction_to_MINIX_3 Exploring the Future of Computing en-us Copyright 2001-2009, David Adams adam+nospam@osnews.com Sun, 08 Nov 2009 22:12:09 GMT http://www.osnews.com/images/osnews.gif http://www.osnews.com http://osnews.com/thread?165286 http://osnews.com/thread?165286 Does anyone who has played around with Minix have any idea on its potential as a full fledged desktop or server OS? Even if it may not have the app support yet, could it? Mon, 25 Sep 2006 06:29:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (bsharitt) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?165289 http://osnews.com/thread?165289 Hmm.. every day I turn my TV off and on.. who knows what's happening internally, so perhaps I do reboot my TV every day? Mon, 25 Sep 2006 06:32:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (flanque) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?165295 http://osnews.com/thread?165295 i wont recommend this article because of

"For example, a complete system build, which requires over 120 compilations, takes well under 10 sec." Mon, 25 Sep 2006 07:31:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (PipoDeClown) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?165305 http://osnews.com/thread?165305 Building a reliable system despite the inevitable bugs in device drivers was the original driving force behind MINIX 3.

Must be the case with less than 4000 lines of code.Interesting. Mon, 25 Sep 2006 08:17:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (netpython) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?165308 http://osnews.com/thread?165308 Currently the user interface is just X, but someday a GUI may be added if a suitable lightweight GUI can be found.

And here I was thinking that X was a GUI. Glad he cleared that up. Mon, 25 Sep 2006 08:21:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (HappyGod) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?165309 http://osnews.com/thread?165309 At the very least this will put some pressure on linux to become more reliable by putting less performance critical subsystems into user space. Mon, 25 Sep 2006 08:30:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (tuttle) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?165312 http://osnews.com/thread?165312 At the very least this will put some pressure on linux to become more reliable by putting less performance critical subsystems into user space.

Not only linux,any OS. Mon, 25 Sep 2006 08:40:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (netpython) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?165317 http://osnews.com/thread?165317 More alternatives is never a bad thing. This is what I love about free software. Mon, 25 Sep 2006 09:21:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (jessta) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?165318 http://osnews.com/thread?165318 hi
its me, the references to linux and linux here is an attempt to chagne history. pls ignore it

thanks Mon, 25 Sep 2006 09:24:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (AndyTanenbaum) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?165319 http://osnews.com/thread?165319 from Wikipedia: "X provides the basic framework for a GUI environment: drawing and moving windows on the screen and interacting with a mouse and/or keyboard. X does not mandate the user interface – individual client programs handle this." Mon, 25 Sep 2006 09:26:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Dinadan) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?165320 http://osnews.com/thread?165320 Clearly, this is the future. I claim that MINIX3 has a "high potential" just because of that.

"Andy Tanenbaum", are you really Andrew S. Tanenbaum?Edited 2006-09-25 09:43 Mon, 25 Sep 2006 09:42:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (bouh) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?165321 http://osnews.com/thread?165321 People - don't mod down somebody, who I assume IS Andy Tanenbaum from the content of the post - who is trying to pre-empt a tedious flamefest about Linux. We're discussing Minix here. It sounds great. I have just the machine for it, and will try it out. Hopefully someone will soon port a basic desktop manager to it (I'm a graphics worker) which would make it totally suitable for OLPC and other educational projects. Mon, 25 Sep 2006 09:51:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (biteydog) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?165324 http://osnews.com/thread?165324 X is not a GUI by itself. The main components of X are:

- an abstract interface to device drivers for displays, keyboards, mice, etc.
- a network protocol to connect to remote I/O devices
- an architecture for sharing these devices between applications Mon, 25 Sep 2006 09:55:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Morin) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?165326 http://osnews.com/thread?165326 Sorry if I offended you. I will definitely check this out. I think that microkernel OSes are a much better approach than monolithic kernels. To be honest, I think that all current mainstream OSes (Windows, Linux, OSX) are kind of lame.

I was just attempting to estimate how this would influence that other OS.

By the way: is there a stable interface for binary drivers for Minix 3? This is very important for wide scale adoption, and that other OS does not want to do it for ideological reasons. Mon, 25 Sep 2006 09:59:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (tuttle) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?165330 http://osnews.com/thread?165330 Rebirth

Although MINIX was (and still is) widely used used for teaching operating systems courses at universities, it got a new impetus in 2005 when Tanenbaum assembled a new team of people to completely redo it as a highly reliable system.

When the special contributor is Prof. Tanenbaum himself, why is the article written in third (second??) person ?

Has the article been edited by osnews before publishing?

BTW, a very good article. Enjoyed reading it.Edited 2006-09-25 10:22 Mon, 25 Sep 2006 10:08:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (jbalmer) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?165331 http://osnews.com/thread?165331 I would expect the "real" Andy Tanenbaum to be able to spell and not using silly acronyms like "pls".Edited 2006-09-25 10:14 Mon, 25 Sep 2006 10:11:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Soulbender) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?165336 http://osnews.com/thread?165336 pls is an abbreviation, not an acronym, or NAA, as I like to call it. Mon, 25 Sep 2006 10:31:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Janizary) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?165344 http://osnews.com/thread?165344 "X is not a GUI by itself. The main components of X are:
- an abstract interface to device drivers for displays, keyboards, mice, etc.
- a network protocol to connect to remote I/O devices
- an architecture for sharing these devices between applications"

"pls is an abbreviation, not an acronym, or NAA, as I like to call it."

Bunch of crying babies. Why don't you grammatically/historically/definitively correct me too you loosers. Go and write a poem somewhere to your boyfriends. Mon, 25 Sep 2006 11:58:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Bringbackanonposting) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?165349 http://osnews.com/thread?165349 It was not the real Andy Tanenbaum. It was a fake account which I've suspended. Mon, 25 Sep 2006 12:06:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Adam S) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?165351 http://osnews.com/thread?165351 The Minix3 description/features look like it could have been pulled from the QNX4 website - except for the full C source available. (That's a compliment).Edited 2006-09-25 12:16 Mon, 25 Sep 2006 12:13:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (pdkrocul) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?165355 http://osnews.com/thread?165355 I received the CD at a lecture by Andy Tannenbaum, and it it's pretty good stuff (boots lightning fast, but my hardware wasn't supported). The article is more or less a condensed version of the lecture, so I am pretty convinced that this is the real Andy Tannenbaum. Still, projects like Minix may be the most elegant solutions, but they have to put up a battle against less elegant solutions that are mostly functioning and quite evolved, and that for the industry just work.

The ideas may be great, but I am not sure that the industry will be willing to put enough muscle behind minix to help it fly. Mon, 25 Sep 2006 12:21:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Blikkie) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?165357 http://osnews.com/thread?165357 I have seen Bang & Olufsen TV-systems to lockup with text displayed "software mangel" (malfunction in Danish). Mon, 25 Sep 2006 12:25:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Network23) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?165367 http://osnews.com/thread?165367 So drivers are living in user space. That should make developing drivers much easier.

What this project needs now is a kick ass driver development kit including a nice driver debugger including all the usual bells and whistles such as breakpoints etc.

Ideally it should be so easy to write drivers for Minix3 that people write the prototype driver for their hardware on Minix3 and then port it to the mainstream OSes.

That is the only way I can think of to have decent driver support for a new, non-mainstream OS. Mon, 25 Sep 2006 12:53:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (tuttle) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?165368 http://osnews.com/thread?165368 What a disappointing article regarding he's a computer science professor. Mon, 25 Sep 2006 12:59:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (_DoubleThink_) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?165371 http://osnews.com/thread?165371 well given that the interface is a messaging system, i think it can be made to be highly stable, in theory.

basicly they can introduce versioned messages, and if some drivers are so old that they dont pass version, assume it goes to the oldest of the old. Mon, 25 Sep 2006 13:27:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (hobgoblin) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?165372 http://osnews.com/thread?165372 Why not model it after something really reliable, like a hammer. When's the last time you rebooted your hammer? Mon, 25 Sep 2006 13:30:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Sphinx) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?165373 http://osnews.com/thread?165373 hmm, i can think of some potential guis for this one.

as for drivers, whats the chance of them being ported from BSD or linux? Mon, 25 Sep 2006 13:30:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (hobgoblin) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?165380 http://osnews.com/thread?165380 I recently picked up from the library "Modern Operating Systems" by Prof. Tanenbaum. (2nd, edition, 2001, not too much mention of Minix.)

I wanted to know more about the concepts and nuts and bolts of OS design and implementation - not because I could ever hope to make any meaningful sort of contribution, but just to have a better appreciation of systems I work with.

I never expected to be able to do anything practical with it, but it turned out that I was able to use this book to squash a very annoying bug. I was reading it at the bus stop a few days ago, and after boarding noticed that a wasp had followed us on board the crowded bus. It was getting angrier by the minute at being cooped up, so seizing the opportunity I reached over and flattened it against the window with the back of Prof. Tanenbaum's suitably hefty tome. I felt a little heartless, but not too many months before I had spared a wasp on the bus, and it had crawled up my pants leg and stung me in some painful areas (providing free entertainment for the other passengers). I wish I'd had his book then. (True story.)

Geoff Mon, 25 Sep 2006 14:24:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Geoff Gigg) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?165382 http://osnews.com/thread?165382 The more POSIX compliant OS's we have the better it is in the long run. Mon, 25 Sep 2006 14:36:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (silicon) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?165388 http://osnews.com/thread?165388 The more POSIX compliant operating systems we have the fewer new ideas and apporaches will emerge. POSIX compliance is not the holy graal of operating systems and I applaude each and every project that dares to try something new and different. Mon, 25 Sep 2006 14:59:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (DevL) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?165389 http://osnews.com/thread?165389 I wonder what it would take to make GNUstep run on that thing Mon, 25 Sep 2006 15:00:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (dylansmrjones) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?165398 http://osnews.com/thread?165398 "i wont recommend this article because of

"For example, a complete system build, which requires over 120 compilations, takes well under 10 sec.""

What's wrong with that sentence ? Mon, 25 Sep 2006 15:26:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Jack Burton) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?165401 http://osnews.com/thread?165401 I agree that POSIX compliance often limits an OS.

But in this case I am sure the POSIX compliance is just a user space module sitting on top of the real OS without compromising the OS design.

The performance will be slightly less than with an OS designed exclusively for POSIX compliance, but I will gladly accept that for better stability and easier driver development. Mon, 25 Sep 2006 15:42:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (tuttle) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?165403 http://osnews.com/thread?165403 And with each and every project that tries to do something different, you add new incompatibilities between systems.

Trying out new things IS good, but there needs to be coordinated efforts to bring those things to a wider audience as well.
Get wide enough support, and keep it under strict, but open, control by suitable players, and you have a new standard that makes life better for the users... hopefully. Mon, 25 Sep 2006 15:46:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Marcellus) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?165419 http://osnews.com/thread?165419 Depends on how you define "rebooting my hammer"

Last time I checked the shaft of a hammer could actually break. Mon, 25 Sep 2006 16:22:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (dylansmrjones) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?165451 http://osnews.com/thread?165451 ...I can run Minix3 with these window managers:
-jwm (you can find it in the minix packages)
-icewm
-WindowMaker
... Mon, 25 Sep 2006 17:19:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (elettrosmoke) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?165509 http://osnews.com/thread?165509 The OSes now are bloated a lot, so, Minix3, L4 or all the microkernel based OSes have a lot of potential for the future of computing. Mon, 25 Sep 2006 19:51:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (ebasconp) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?165551 http://osnews.com/thread?165551 I run http://www.minixtips.com on a minix 3 server and it runs fine. So I think as an HTTP server it makes a fine OS. I've also run it as a desktop quite a lot - uses the X windows client and wiirc as the window manager. Again, no problems for normal desktop usage.

I did have to use remote X to another machine to run programs that haven't been ported yet though. The main one being Firefox.Edited 2006-09-25 22:41 Mon, 25 Sep 2006 22:41:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (doublec) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?165598 http://osnews.com/thread?165598 Sounds great

Ever tried compiling GNUstep on it?

And how do icewm or WindowMaker fare on Minix3 compared with Linux? Tue, 26 Sep 2006 03:09:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (dylansmrjones) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?165605 http://osnews.com/thread?165605 I like the concept behind this kernel. Putting all of the drivers and subsystems in userspace and reserving kernel mode for the low level operations like process scheduling and IPC is more secure and reliable. The live monitoring (daemon??) that dynamically restarts misbehaving drivers modules is also neat and could really improve overall stability.

But I'm assuming this dynamic monitoring feature inflicts some performance implications?

Its unfortunate that so few devices are supported by this kernel. Maybe someday an effort will be made to port the majority of open-source Linux drivers to the Minix kernel so that we can have a viable microkernel alternative to Linux. The alternatives now are mostly monolithic like Linux except for Hurd. But I suppose Duke Nukem Forever II will be available before Hurd ever stablizes. Tue, 26 Sep 2006 03:47:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Xaero_Vincent) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?165628 http://osnews.com/thread?165628 Minix, with its Microkernel is very impressive and extensive for a guy like me who is after the awesome integration of OS in a very small but efficient core, I am also impressed by running drivers in user process, this would protect every user's thread and activity.

This is such as a nice and genius innovation on the part of OS engineering and I hope Mr. Andrew will not stall from it's graceful development...

Go Go GO Go .... Great RacoonEdited 2006-09-26 06:18 Tue, 26 Sep 2006 06:12:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (neo_0531) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?165629 http://osnews.com/thread?165629 I would be very satifisfied if Andrew will port SAMBA Server on Minix... Tue, 26 Sep 2006 06:17:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (neo_0531) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?165641 http://osnews.com/thread?165641 At the very least this will put some pressure on linux to become more reliable by putting less performance critical subsystems into user space.

Not only linux,any OS.

I do see the sense of what you are saying about a stable OS being a good example for fellow OSes to live up to, be it Linux or any other.

Now compare that ideal path towards The Optimum to the actuality that Minix has been around longer than Linux and at this moment poses not even the slightest challenge to the market share of any mainstream OS. And maybe not to any niche OS either, but there are more niches than I keep tabs on, so perhaps I've overstated that a bit. (;

I'm still pulling for the paradigm you and tuttle have outlined, but I don't think it has actually arrived yet. On the other hand if no one sets a good example we can't expect stability to magically emerge from the Singularity. Oh, wait ... Tue, 26 Sep 2006 08:38:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (glarepate) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?165646 http://osnews.com/thread?165646 The old Minix was an academic OS that was designed primarily as a learning tool and not as a serious OS. Even Tannenbaum himself said so. Of course stuff like QNX has been available for a long time, but that is not open source.

Both Linux and Windows are moving in the right direction, albeit very slowly. Windows Vista is putting things like the Video and Audio stack into user space, and on linux there is stuff like FUSE (File System in User Space).

Since on UNIX almost everything is a file, you can do a lot more than just storage with FUSE. Tue, 26 Sep 2006 10:08:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (tuttle) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?165846 http://osnews.com/thread?165846 When the special contributor is Prof. Tanenbaum himself, why is the article written in third (second??) person ?

It takes some getting used to, but it is actually customary in academic circles to do it this way. It makes more sense when referring to articles the author wrote together with other people (e.g.: 'Tanenbaum & X did..'), but I assume the custom is derived from such instances. Tue, 26 Sep 2006 21:58:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Ronald Vos) Comments