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Lessons Learned from 30 Years of MINIX
- yanowitz 11y agoObOriginalTanenbaumTorvaldsConflictLink: <https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/comp.os.minix/wlhw16QWltI%5B1-25%5D> https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/comp.os.minix/wlhw16... Linus' personality is remarkably intact, 24 years later. More background: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanenbaum%E2%80%93Torvalds_debate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanenbaum%E2%80%93Torvalds_deb...
- digi_owl 11y agoInteresting to see him come back further down the thread to apologize for his initial outburst. There may be more than a few doing FOSS projects right now that could learn a thing or two from that.
- justincormack 11y agoYes I always liked this quote... True, linux is monolithic, and I agree that microkernels are nicer... As has been noted (not only by me), the linux kernel is a miniscule part of a complete system: Full sources for linux currently runs to about 200kB compressed. And all of that source is portable, except for this tiny kernel that you can (provably: I did it) re-write totally from scratch in less than a year without having /any/ prior knowledge.
- nickpsecurity 11y agoI thought of redoing Linux with high-security engineering. Looked at a book on the kernel and some of the source. Decided against a one man rewrite. Although, my first discoveries looking at prior attempts at highly secure UNIX (Data Secure, UCLA and Trusted Xenix) showed that securing UNIX with app compatibility was impossible or improbable.
- yxlx 11y agoURL was corrupted for me. Working link: http://groups.google.com/group/comp.os.minix/browse_thread/thread/c25870d7a41696d2/f447530d082cd95d?tvc=2 http://groups.google.com/group/comp.os.minix/browse_thread/t...
- nickpsecurity 11y agoRelevant to their debate with modern elements: http://www.cs.vu.nl/~ast/reliable-os/ http://www.cs.vu.nl/~ast/reliable-os/ http://www.coyotos.org/docs/misc/linus-rebuttal.html http://www.coyotos.org/docs/misc/linus-rebuttal.html
- snvzz 11y agoAlso: http://blog.darknedgy.net/technology/2016/01/01/0/ http://blog.darknedgy.net/technology/2016/01/01/0/
- nickpsecurity 11y agoDidn't know about that one. Had a few links and data new to me. Thanks for the link!
- conceit 11y agoIn the last link, Dr. Shapiro calls Linus wrong, is he still alive, even?
- nickpsecurity 11y agoDid you mean who is he or where is he? Shapiro and his people cranked out one exemplar piece of work after another: security kernel for Scheme LISP; capability-secure OS (EROS); trusted networking stack; secure, partitioned GUI; persistent apps; verifiable ML-like system language in prototype form. Was revising that language and EROS successor (Coyotos) when Microsoft poached him. Now he's a professor but Im not sure if he's still active or why he quit if not. Many, myself included, reduced industry and FOSS activities in high assurance because of virtually no demand plus unwillingness of majority to leverage proven techniques. Snowden leaks later confirmed work like his (and mine) would've stopped many of their attacks. So, still worth looking at his publications and reading his essays if you're learning strong, security engineering.
- abecedarius 11y agoRe the Scheme work, I think you're thinking of Jonathan Rees. I agree that this vein of work deserved far more support. (I once stayed off the job market for several months hoping for a DARPA contract in capability security to come through -- it didn't -- so I'm hardly unbiased.)
- bluedino 11y agoI could listen to Andy talks for hours. He has the greatest stories, so much experience and wisdom. I wonder if he and Linus get along in person, I had a 100% different impression of this guy solely based on his flamewars with Linus (who's probably the 'bad one')
- rogerbinns 11y agoIt was unfortunate how Minix was distributed as a $69 book. It was very expensive for a student. Inflation corrected it would be about $120 now. However being in the UK meant the usual 1 USD = 1 GBP conversion (making it cost about 50% more), not to mention VAT at another 15% on top - a total of about $210 in today's money. I am pointing this out not because the pricing was unreasonable, but because it was a big barrier to use. (At the same time a full version of Windows 3.0 retailed for $149 or $79 (upgrade) - 1990 dollars. You also required a copy of DOS.) The article also mentions 32 bit support, but there was a lot of tension going on. It was possible to make Minix perform a lot better by deeper platform support and multi-threading components (especially the filesystem), but this made the code more complex, longer and harder to understand. Consequently there were two versions of Minix in use - the base true to the mission, and big patch sets on top that made it more usable/performant. The latter were distributed over the Internet. This shows why Linux took off so quickly. There was no barrier to participation like paying for the book. While functionality was a lot less, there was no gatekeeper keeping it small, simple and educational. And Minix had shown how to collaborate with patches to an operating system over the Internet. It didn't take long for Linux to overtake Minix onto the path we see today.
- msbarnett 11y ago> It was unfortunate how Minix was distributed as a $69 book. It was very expensive for a student. Inflation corrected it would be about $120 now. And in a good example of how textbook prices inflate at well above the general rate of inflation, the current Minix 3 version retails for $176.
- justincormack 11y agoThere was also the UK ruling that VAT was chargeable on books with CDs on them, but not other books.
- ternaryoperator 11y agoThat being said, it was the finest textbook on operating systems available at the time and I expect still among the best even these many years later.
- snvzz 11y agoWorking archive: https://archive.is/lc5vT https://archive.is/lc5vT
- krylon 11y agoHonest question: Is somebody using MINIX as a production system? I suppose it is not very popular as a server system, but since its current target is embedded use, are there any products built on/around MINIX?
- david-given 11y agoDon't know, would be interested to find out. FWIW: Minix 2 will still get you a fully functional Unixoid on a PC XT with 8086 processor and 640kB RAM. (It'll run in less, but I assume you want to run some processes in addition to the shell.) And Minix 3 is a complete ground up rewrite, substantially more sophisticated, with a ludicrously small footprint and NetBSD compatibility (I believe it comes with NetBSD Ports).
- rwmj 11y agoFor quite a while around 1991/1992 I had Minix 1.5 running on an NEC V30 [8086 clone], with a dumb terminal plugged into the serial port, and it (just about) allowed two people to do useful work. Certainly editing files with microemacs and compiling with the ACK compiler was possible.
- phicoh 11y agoMINIX3 is not a ground up rewrite. It started off with the MINIX2 sources. A lot has been added and changed. Mainly to provide complete fault isolation for device drivers. (Aside from adding missing functionality)
- phicoh 11y agoIn the early nineties, Kees Bot and I created a fork of MINIX called Minix-vmd. Some instances of that have been running production for close to 20 years now. Mainly as mail, usenet news, and http server and as routers.
- nickpsecurity 11y agoHow often do the more active ones last between failures? Just curious.
- hobo_mark 11y agoIn a parallel universe: ten years ago Andy gets his grad students to port MINIX 3 to ARM and turns it into the educational OS of choice for the Raspberry pi.
- degio 11y agooff topic but I think interesting: Andy Tanenbaum is also the creator and maintainer of http://www.electoral-vote.com/ http://www.electoral-vote.com/, which I find to be one of best resources on american elections.
- platform 11y agoThx for the reference. I had no idea. I presume it reflects Andy's biases (which is, of course, up to Andy) WRT Gov. Susana Martinez .... A good-looking Latina governor from a Western swing state with a fiery conservative speaking style would be a good addition to any ticket. Comparisons will undoubtedly be made to Sarah Palin, but Martinez is completely sane and is fluent in two languages that Palin has little command of: Spanish and English.
- digi_owl 11y ago> good-looking Latina Someone is playing with fire...
- seeing 11y agoLesson. If marketing the product according to plan A does not work, invent plan B. If you can make Minix run on a MacBook Air, AND get wifi working without me having to do anything, I'm willing to try it. Neither Linux nor FreeBSD have been able to do this.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- rubberstamp 11y agolinux mint seems to get drivers right. have you tried it? almost 4 years now on mint. very stable to do dev work and web browsing without having to worry about malware. it's not perfect but so far it's the one OS that gave me less reasons to hate having micro kernel and well architectured OS is great. but without equally good gui, usability suffers
- jcr 11y agoDown on the very bottom of the page is a seemingly mistyped link to the video where Andy Tanenbaum discusses the lessons learned. http://cacm.acm.org/videos/lessons-learned-from-30-years-of-minix http://cacm.acm.org/videos/lessons-learned-from-30-years-of-... The above just redirects to vimeo: https://vimeo.com/154212224 https://vimeo.com/154212224
- digi_owl 11y agoTIL that Ts'o has been with Linux since the early days.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- ryenus 11y agoIs it just me thought it's hard to read a page w/o padding? Here is the rescue: $('body').css('padding', '0 15px')