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Minix development has been abandoned?
- tannerbrockwell 3y agohttps://www.zdnet.com/article/minix-intels-hidden-in-chip-operating-system/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/minix-intels-hidden-in-chip-op...
- gambiting 3y ago"These processors are running a closed-source variation of the open-source MINIX 3. We don't know exactly what version or how it's been modified" You'd hope the version they use has been worked on in the last 5 years.
- lmm 3y agoOr maybe you'd hope it hasn't - if there are holes in it then you've got a better chance of being able to regain control of your own hardware.
- jethro_tell 3y agoSo does everyone else. Hoping that intel drops the ball on your processors security in what is likely a high dollar research area for most nation states is not a great play. In theory you can just turn it off in your bios but, who knows?
- doctor_eval 3y ago> You'd hope the version they use has been worked on in the last 5 years. And yet, so many hopes are dashed.
- Jamesmoorez 3y ago[dead]
- tambourine_man 3y agoCan’t software be done? No known bugs, all features in a proposed scope written. Done and done.
- msla 3y agoNo, software can't be done, because the hardware platform it runs on continues to change.
- cyanydeez 3y agoPerpetual growth is a myth, even in software. Things like Docker demonstrate all that matters is encapsulation by those interested in keeping these projects live.
- jethro_tell 3y agosure, but minix is running directly in the cpu of every intel processor for the last decade+. So it surely doesn't apply here.
- msla 3y agoPerpetual growth, nothing. CPUs and graphics hardware changes, so the OS has to change.
- mensetmanusman 3y agoOne exciting thing about Moore’s law being finished would be that the hardware stops changing :)
- msla 3y agoI think you misunderstand Moore's law.
- 542458 3y agoEither one of those would be a notable accomplishment on its own for a medium size codebase. I don’t feel that there would be reason to believe that both of those would be true here.
- zellyn 3y agoThe primary author and evangelist of Minix is 79 years old, so maybe slowing down a bit? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_S._Tanenbaum https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_S._Tanenbaum
- dotnwat 3y agoHe is one of the folks behind https://www.electoral-vote.com/ https://www.electoral-vote.com/ which I think must take up a lot of time.
- tivert 3y ago[flagged]
- Meph504 3y agoPosting judgemental shit on website is a valuable use of time though right?
- RealStickman_ 3y agoAnd the other hand I often hear people complain about out of touch politicians regulating fields where they completely lack any understanding.
- tivert 3y ago> And the other hand I often hear people complain about out of touch politicians regulating fields where they completely lack any understanding. Thoughtfully engaging with policy isn't a waste of time, but that not what the website in question was doing. It looked like it was all poll numbers and horse-race analysis, that's the stuff we should leave for the hacks.
- unixhero 3y agoThe reason is probably that enthusiasm died out when Intel used it for their covert management engine in every x86 cpu they sell. Essentially bavkdooring all computers in the world...
- casey2 3y agoShould've used GPL...
- Gigachad 3y agoThen no one would be using it at all and Intel would pick the next OS project to use.
- csdreamer7 3y agoThat is what enterprises said about Linux. But the network effects are too strong and the GPL requiring the source code for drivers to be released increases the network effects. Unlike permissive licenses. Busybox is still overwhelmed suing companies repeatably ignoring the GPL.
- wkat4242 3y agoThat's a different usecase. Linux is good for general computing. Intel specifically wanted something they could close down as much as possible.
- nequo 3y agoSo if Minix was under GPL, Intel would probably have gone with NetBSD or FreeBSD. Or possibly something different altogether.
- harry8 3y agoL4 is popular among similar corporate trojan malware deployed in secret against customers. Most of its use is by qualcom. Apparently apple are doing something similar. This large scale deployment is apparently billed by some as the payoff for the promise of microkernels w.r.t. "security" so I guess they just don't mean yours?
- Bondi_Blue 3y agoThere's still chatter in the Google Group and GH Issues, and some GH PRs. https://groups.google.com/g/minix3?pli=1 https://groups.google.com/g/minix3?pli=1 https://github.com/Stichting-MINIX-Research-Foundation/minix https://github.com/Stichting-MINIX-Research-Foundation/minix
- JdeBP 3y agoThe pull requests list is better than the issues list. This non-bug asks for a video on how to use OpenSSH: * https://github.com/Stichting-MINIX-Research-Foundation/minix/issues/305 https://github.com/Stichting-MINIX-Research-Foundation/minix... This one was fixed in 2017: * https://github.com/Stichting-MINIX-Research-Foundation/minix/issues/216 https://github.com/Stichting-MINIX-Research-Foundation/minix... This non-bug asks for where to start when learning: * https://github.com/Stichting-MINIX-Research-Foundation/minix/issues/304 https://github.com/Stichting-MINIX-Research-Foundation/minix... I've gone through quite a few of these at random, for this and another comment on this page, and this one is the first one that is even close to an outstanding bug, and it's only open because the pull request that fixed the problem back in 2020 hasn't been merged yet. * https://github.com/Stichting-MINIX-Research-Foundation/minix/issues/229 https://github.com/Stichting-MINIX-Research-Foundation/minix...
- gumby 3y agoI think people got everything they wanted in Minix: https://lore.kernel.org/all/30th.anniversary.repost@klaava.Helsinki.FI/ https://lore.kernel.org/all/30th.anniversary.repost@klaava.H...
- asperous 3y agoI always saw Minix3 was as a companion to the "Operating Systems: Design and Implementation 3/e by Andrew S" book which was in 2006. Probably you were only ever going to run it in a virtual machine. More of an "educational" kernel.
- TallGuyShort 3y agoNot gonna go hunt for the link right now, but I think Minix 3 was intended to be more industrially applicable than it's predecessors: there's a talk somewhere where Tanenbaum talked about the need for a more fault tolerant kernel in all sorts of applications, and I think he got a grant from some European institution for that purpose.
- tomxor 3y ago> More of an "educational" kernel. If you are writing this on an intel CPU, you are likely running minix3 right now. It's not not educational, but it's not the primary goal compared to earlier versions.
- durandaul_xx 3y agoI'm glad people are talking about this. Minix has so much potential, and it needs a community. It also has a very specific area of need, it's not like you would install it on a desktop and I doubt you can get it running with a purpose in AWS.
- durandaul_xx 3y agoI'm glad this is getting brought up. Minix has so much potential and it is due for an open source community to care with a mission. Its hard to find where an org would use it since Linux is so popular and so few orgs really need a hyper reliable operating system with limited libraries and dependencies. Military or space problems?
- blown_gasket 3y agoFor both military and space applications, I believe that real-time operating systems are employed. Minix is not in the sphere of RTOS.
- stephen_g 3y agoYes, and also if it has to be certified for functional safety (as a lot of systems that use those kind of RTOSes have to be) then that really has to be designed into the system from the start. So Minix would probably be a non-starter in that regard too (as is something like Linux)
- wkat4242 3y agoTechnically intel is keeping it alive. Just not feeding back code. It's sad though. Minix was the first ever Unix I played with! Because Linux only worked on the 386 (it required 386 specific features like task switching) and I still had a 286 at the time. Minix worked fine on that. But it was mainly good for academic purposes (as it's intended to). I never really ran it as an OS. It was hard to find software and it didn't come with a lot of programs, unlike linux distros which came with a huge collection as they still do today. On a 286 it was really cool to have an actual multitasking OS though because DOS was still the main thing back then.
- MuffinFlavored 3y ago> it required 386 specific features like task switching i thought this was a kernel/OS level concept, could you expand more?
- wkat4242 3y agoI'm not qualified to explain but the first answer to this question captures it well I think: https://retrocomputing.stackexchange.com/questions/26516/what-386-specific-features-did-linux-use https://retrocomputing.stackexchange.com/questions/26516/wha...
- js2 3y agox86 has hardware support for context switching, which is basically saving all the registers and jumping to a new address. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Task_state_segment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Task_state_segment
- MuffinFlavored 3y agodoes x86_64 use this?
- skissane 3y agox86-64 still requires Task State Segments (TSS), but it doesn't support using them for their original primary purpose of task switching; rather, they are needed for changing stacks when switching between user and kernel mode. In the original 386 design, the OS kernel would create a separate TSS for each OS process. In x86-64's vestigial use of the concept, there is a single TSS for each CPU, and every process running on that CPU shares the same TSS.
- markus_zhang 3y agoWish I had more knowledge of OS so I can build some tools or parts on top of it. Looks like a great project to have a bit of ownership.
- user6723 3y agoIntel is keeping MINIX alive. If you have an Intel chip there is a remote access to your disk even when the machine is "off'. Foreign governments leverage this to spy on USA, all vulnerabilities in the Intel ME are totally accidents and not intentional.
- kazinator 3y ago"No new bugs have been introduced into Minix in five years, and it hasn't gotten any more bloated!"
- KyleSanderson 3y agoYeah, it's gone. Worked with a guy pre-Intel. The current tree has loads of bugs from a couple students tinkering for their projects (it even working is in question). Like others have mentioned, Intel is the only (large) organisation actively developing it, but their work is not shared back.
- tyingq 3y agoGuessing Fucshia/Zircon probably took some attention away from Minix as well.
- Jamesmoorez 3y ago[dead]
- Jamesmoorez 3y ago[dead]