10 ms·

Andrew S. Tanenbaum Receives ACM Software System Award

381 points by JacobAldridge 2y ago

082349872349872 2y ago
IIRC, Structured Computer Organization played the same role for me, back in the day, that I think From Nand to Tetris has for many of you all.
SkyMarshal 2y ago
Well-deserved, congrats Andrew. I still have his distributed systems textbooks from way back when, and still wish Minix had won and its microkernel model had become the basis of the FOSS *nix ecosystem. Also in case anyone is not aware, Andrew runs the election science blog Electoral Vote [1], using an electoral college poll model to analyze and predict US elections. One of the better US political sites out there. [1]:https://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2024/Info/welcome.html https://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2024/Info/welcome.html
- nicwolff 2y ago
  People should know that electoral-vote.com is not just an election science blog at this point; Andrew and his co-writer Christopher Bates publish a very cogent summary each morning of the previous day's political news and its possible effects on US politics. You could read only their dispassionate but witty daily posts and be a reasonably well informed American citizen.
fermigier 2y ago
I read Operating Systems: Design and Implementation in 1988 or 1989, and it was an insightful and pleasing experience. I only wished, at the time, that there was some Unix-like OS that was "free" (for some intuitive value of the word "free", rather than the formal definition, which I hadn't heard of yet at the time). This could have been Minix.
- trollied 2y ago
  It was one of my degree course books. Thoroughly enjoyed it!
- andyjohnson0 2y ago
  One of the best textbooks I had to read for my degree, back in the 80s. The appendix containg the Minix source code was my first exposure to a large body of well-written C code.
michh 2y ago
Not to mention MINIX is hidden away in almost every modern Intel CPU as part of its Management Engine. This little known fact makes it one of the most widely distributed operating systems.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- Rochus 2y ago
  Why did they use Minix and not e.g. L4 or sel4? Which version of Minix did they actually use? There is Minix v3.1 (released in 2005 with the book), 3.2 (released in 2012) and 3.3 (released in 2014).
  - actionfromafar 2y ago
    Or Minix 2?
  - michh 2y ago
    As to why, no idea. I guess some engineer was just familiar with it from their undergrad days like the rest of us. And which version, I know it’s MINIX 3 but beyond that? No idea. They probably heavily modified it and as Minix is not GPL, Intel never published it. Based on the timelines it’s likely 3.1 as the ME platform has heen around since approximately 2007 iirc.
    - Rochus 2y ago
      > it’s likely 3.1 as the ME platform has heen around since approximately 2007 Then I guess it's one of the 3.1.3x versions released in 2007 (see https://github.com/Stichting-MINIX-Research-Foundation/minix/tags https://github.com/Stichting-MINIX-Research-Foundation/minix...), or maybe 3.1.2 from 2006, depending how long hey had to implement the ME.
  - looperhacks 2y ago
    The original L4 (I believe) wasn't commercially available und sel4 is GPL licensed. Minix has a BSD license, so maybe that's why
ivankolev 2y ago
Still have a cd-rom with copy of minix3, from when he had a talk in my university. His books on OS and Networking are very approachable and fun read!
alphabeta2024 2y ago
I was failing badly in my computer architecture courses. Received a 5% score in one of the mid-terms. Switched from the recommended book to Andrew's book and did nothing apart from read it everyday for 2 hours. Received 100% in the final. Such an amazingly approachable book. :-)
- blast 2y ago
  Wow. Which book?
  - kenniskrag 2y ago
    One of these: https://media.pearsoncmg.com/bc/abp/cs-resources/products/series.html#series,series=Tanenbaum https://media.pearsoncmg.com/bc/abp/cs-resources/products/se...
- jdougan 2y ago
  Out of curiosity, which was the recommended book?
  - asp_hornet 2y ago
    Not OP but if it was computer architecture i imagine it would be “structured computer organisation”. One if my favourite books on computers and looking at the comments, many people here too. Source: this book got me top marks too
  - trueismywork 2y ago
    Some horrible local author whose name I now forget. Andrew's book was Structred Computer Organization
- grugagag 2y ago
  I had Tannenbaum books in in two of my CS courses too 2 decades back. They were great textbooks, found them quite accessible too
emporas 2y ago
I have read Tanenbaum's book twice. Really great book. Very dense in information but enjoyable as well. That and the Common Lisp Reference Manual were at some point my favorite CS readings. I was reading them in printed form.
- alex_suzuki 2y ago
  Which one? He has written more than one great book. :-)
  - emporas 2y ago
    Yeah i didn't specify, i think it is the "Modern Operating Systems". I read it in Greek and I don't remember the title, maybe the title was translated a little bit different. It was not the Minix book, i have not read that unfortunately. Now however, i am sold on the idea of the Lisp Machine. Hopefully some day a lisp OS and hardware will be a viable way to use a computer.
alex_suzuki 2y ago
His book “Computer Networks” was one of my favourites in my CompSci study days. Many years later I gave lectures on Distributed Systems at a business school and based the material on the book. Still feels relevant, even today.
- globular-toast 2y ago
  This was my favourite textbook of my entire undergrad CS studies. I still have it on my shelf to this day. I've never gone deep into networking but the broad knowledge has stayed with me and comes in useful again and again. I would say it sets me apart from many other engineers.
- supriyo-biswas 2y ago
  Although this is a thread about Tanenbaum, personally I feel that Data Communications and Networking by Forouzan helps explain things in a better way and goes into the details of each network layer. Modern Operating Systems is great though, and when I was in college I've recommended it to peers whose feedback was along the same lines.
fancyfredbot 2y ago
This is a richly deserved award for a great educator who makes computer science both accessible and enjoyable. Structures computer organisation is supposed to be a textbook but it's written so well I found myself reading it cover to cover like a thriller. You won't find many people saying that about Knuth for example (not to say anything against Knuth who is amazing in his own way).
GTP 2y ago
It's funny to see how they highlight that it inspired Linux, ehile Tanenbaum heavily criticized it for not being a microkernel :D
- LeFantome 2y ago
  Well, it “inspired” Linux because Linus was unhappy with Minix. Linus wanted UNIX and Minix was not what he was looking for. I don’t think emulating Minix itself was ever his goal. He chose the Minix file system originally but this was just pragmatic as that is what his drive was formatted with. The earliest versions of Linux were written on Minix though. Credit where credit is due. Interestingly, Linus was unaware of BSD. He has said that, if he had known about it, he may never have written Linux to begin with.
  - gpvos 2y ago
    When Linux was written BSD was still encumbered by non-BSD-licensed AT&T code. That changed a year or so later.
  - GTP 2y ago
    IIRC the very first installations of Linix started with Minix as a base, that then was "patched" into Linux. So it was more than just the filesystem. But yes, Torvalds wasn't happy with Minix, and Tanenbaum wasn't happy with Linux.
  - guiambros 2y ago
    The whole flame war between the two is worth a read [1], at least for historical reasons; very different points of view. And while Linus disagreed with Tanenbaum's POV, I Tanenbaum's criticism to Linux made it actually better. [1] https://groups.google.com/g/comp.os.minix/c/wlhw16QWltI#9f3c7c165aacc83f https://groups.google.com/g/comp.os.minix/c/wlhw16QWltI#9f3c...
    - kalleboo 2y ago
      My favorite thing about that whole thread is the unanimous consensus among everyone involved that we will all be running GNU/Hurd in 2 years so these stopgap OSes are just academic hobbies.
latenightcoding 2y ago
is MINIX abandonware now? Many years ago I tried to install the release that works (or comes bundled) with a light window manager but it was not trivial and it looked pretty abandoned even back then.
- boricj 2y ago
  MINIX3's development has stalled years ago. Basically, around MINIX 3.2.0 (just before I stated contributing) the OS ditched its homegrown userland and adopted the NetBSD source tree + pkgsrc. While that boosted the software compatibility of MINIX3 in the short term, the maintenance burden of keeping up with upstream with such a large diff proved unsustainable in the long term, especially after the grant money dried up. In hindsight, my opinion is that MINIX3 should've gone with NetBSD binary compatibility. The NetBSD syscall table would've been a far slower moving target to keep up with than the entire NetBSD source tree. The OS also had a significant amount of tech debt, especially in the microkernel which was uniprocessor and 32-bit only, as well as outdated hardware support which meant nobody was daily-driving it anymore. It also was an aging design: while the system was divided up into user-mode servers with message-based communication, you couldn't containerize a process by spawning a parallel userland ecosystem for example because it wasn't capability-based or namespaceable. It's too bad really, because the base system had really impressive capabilities. It could transparently survive crashes of stateless drivers, even when stress-testing it by injecting faults into the drivers at runtime. You could live-update the various system services at runtime without losing state or impacting clients. Some really good papers came out of MINIX3 [1]. I've ranted more in detail before, both on HN [2] as well on Google Groups [3]. I do not fault the maintainers for the current state of affairs because keeping up the MINIX3 userland against modern software standards was a major maintenance burden, so adopting NetBSD's one way or another was inevitable. At any rate, there are other micro-kernel based operating systems [4], some under active development, so MINIX's spirit lives on. [1] https://wiki.minix3.org/doku.php?id=publications https://wiki.minix3.org/doku.php?id=publications [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34916261 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34916261 [3] https://groups.google.com/g/minix3/c/qUdPZ0ansVw/m/7LuOv0YOAQAJ https://groups.google.com/g/minix3/c/qUdPZ0ansVw/m/7LuOv0YOA... [4] http://www.microkernel.info/ http://www.microkernel.info/
electrodank 2y ago
I see ASTs books, in particular the hands-on Minix ones, as sitting on the same “plane” as the philosophy espoused in The Night Watch paper. Ultimately the paper is about a level of comfort with reality that is at it’s core rooted in familiarity with rather than ignorance due to abstractions, and having learned fearlessness rather than helplessness. While it is highly unlikely you will be having a debugging session that has you executing kernel-level code alongside having an oscilloscope/logic probe hooked up to the pins of a processor chip to monitor data lines (though we all know someone who does this without a second thought), having this level of knowledge and comfort with being ever so slightly closer to the silicone, the data sheet of the processor somewhere near by, the memory segmentation modes not too alien of a concept, is a great boon to a software developer. It is a leap that I think everyone should try just once, and with it, abolish any notion of mental barriers that prevent one from understanding how things really work.
ginko 2y ago
It's kind of sad systems research pretty much stopped at this point. I really was hoping that by 2024 I'd be running a distributed operating system where processes could be be freely migrated between my phone, desktop, laptop and NAS without too much of a hitch.
- fooker 2y ago
  The research has not stalled at all, the incentive to make consumer devices has because of the capture by tech giants. If someone wanted to implement an interesting idea like this, they would be harshly judged for not being able to compete with pixels and iphones for the rest of the stack. See Rabbit for example. What you are describing is the bread and butter of modern systems research and all the large cloud providers internally implement this kind of thing.
- sangnoir 2y ago
  If you really wanted to do this, it would be fairly trivial to implement with Erlang/Elixir. We have thr technology - just no motivation (i.e. no profit in it)
  - rramadass 2y ago
    Hey! Don't let out the secrets :-) This is something i have been long thinking about (but have done nothing practical so far). The problem is how to bridge/shim between Erlang and those platforms which do not support it eg. Android (though some people seem to have done it - https://github.com/JeromeDeBretagne/erlanglauncher https://github.com/JeromeDeBretagne/erlanglauncher). Joe Armstrong actually called the Erlang/OTP System as a AOS (Application Operating System) in his paper i.e. it contains much of the functionality of a traditional OS but people seem to ignore it and insist on calling it "just another language".
    - sangnoir 2y ago
      IMO, you lose half the benefits by shimming OTP (genserver, hot-reload). Platform owners like Apple or Google could easily make Erlang processes first class citizens on their Unix(-like) platforms - one can already run full-fledged Erlang/OTP processes on Android (via Termux). I imagine in an alternative universe were interoperability is more profitable than walled gardens, this technology exist and was standardized and not just a preserve of a few services on iDevices that can "hand-off" to each other (without process migration)
rossant 2y ago
He wrote great books. I am ashamed to admit his OS book served as a monitor support on my desk for some time.
thr0waway001 2y ago
Man, his Computer Networks books were dense but they had a lot of good stuff in them. They also had really good and fun looking covers.
santiagobasulto 2y ago
I’ll never forget this. I was listening to a talk by Reed Hastings (Netflix Founder/CEO) at (I think was) Stanford. He was explaining how he came up with the idea of Netflix. A student asked: “when did you realize you had to switch to the internet”. At which he replied: “that was the idea from the beginning. We knew networks were going to become what they are today. Look, there’s a saying in a CS textbook that says: ‘never underestimate the bandwidth of a truck full of tapes over the interstate’. We knew we had to ship the DVDs first until at some point the network would reach our desired level”. While I was watching that i said: “DUDE! I remember that quote (and that illustration)”. Went to my text book and there it was. In Tanenbaum’s networking textbook. Aside from the anecdote, this guy has had a huge influence in the whole industry (not even mentioning the Kernel debates).
- Upvoter33 2y ago
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sneakernet https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sneakernet Has some pointers to the orig source
- jldugger 2y ago
  Imagine naming your company "Netflix" and saying "naw, the internet is a fad."
Sporktacular 2y ago
So what is the outcome of the kernel war? Performant micro-kernels have settled it no?
pridkett 2y ago
Another awesome fact about Tanenbaum is that he was the person behind electoral-vote.com. Prior to everyone having their own model and Nate Silver (err, should I say Poblano?) running the table in 2008, this was the place to go understand the 2004 US Presidential Election between Bush and Kerry. Hugely helpful for many people to understand polling and statistics.
- quesera 2y ago
  > he was the person behind electoral-vote.com electoral-vote.com is still going strong: https://www.electoral-vote.com/ https://www.electoral-vote.com/ I'm sure you know this, but I want to emphasize it for anyone who is not aware. Prof Tanenbaum has a co-writer now (Prof Bates, history at UCLA/Cal Poly), and the site is published every day (used to be weekdays only and only during election cycles).
bouvin 2y ago
I was myself taught Computer Architecture in 1991 using the Tanenbaum SCO book, and many years later taught the Computer Architecture course for four years using the SCO book (a later edition, but still!). A true classic, and if anything, it is a wonder that Tanenbaum had not already received the award.
kleiba 2y ago
Err, perhaps I'm missing something, but if the ACM Software System Award is presented to an institution or individual(s) recognized for developing a software system that has had a lasting influence, how come Linus hasn't got his yet?
- surajrmal 2y ago
  I wonder if they simply don't want to reward his toxicity.
  - ohmyiv 2y ago
    Damn, how'd you get stuck in the pre-2018 era? Come stay in the present, things are alright.
- intelVISA 2y ago
  Perhaps a consolation prize that Linus doesn't need...
NonEUCitizen 2y ago
The Amsterdam Compiler Kit is also his work (along with Ceriel Jacobs): https://github.com/davidgiven/ack Just as Minix perhaps could've been Linux, The Amsterdam Compiler Kit could've been gcc, but for licensing issues: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2001/apr/10/firstchapters.highereducation4 https://www.theguardian.com/books/2001/apr/10/firstchapters....
eimrine 2y ago
I want to appreciate Andrew Tanenbaum for making possible the world's most popular OS, Intel ME. This system has been made absolutely right in every its piece except license. Minix under GPL would not let megagorporations to backdoor every functional x86 chip on the planet.
- hun3 2y ago
  What keeps it from becoming a free software backdoor?
  - luyu_wu 2y ago
    GPL would theoretically force ME to open its source code.
    - hun3 2y ago
      Yes, so an open source...backdoor.
- BSDobelix 2y ago
  >right in every its piece except license. But then it would not be the "most popular OS" right? Whats your logic here?
- SkyMarshal 2y ago
  A different license wouldn't change that. They would just find some way to do it with BSD or some other OS.
Abishek_Muthian 2y ago
I came across Tanenbaum's Operating Systems book during my CS and it had a huge influence over me, till then I was a huge Windows nerd and after reading the book I felt like I was being cheated by Windows, like I was denied something which was rightfully mine. I hated my labs as it had only Windows, started exploring *nix systems post class and never went back. Thank you Mr.Andrew and congratulations.
pyeri 2y ago
Anyone remembers the legendary Torvalds-Tanenbaum debates? What were they exacly about?
- rramadass 2y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanenbaum%E2%80%93Torvalds_debate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanenbaum%E2%80%93Torvalds_deb...
- SkyMarshal 2y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40761968 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40761968
rramadass 2y ago
Every student should read Tanenbaum's "Structured Computer Organization". It was the first book which showed me the logical layering involved in a "Computer System" which is absolutely essential to understanding this field.
braza 2y ago
For who does not know, his books used as textbook in South American universities for years during 90s.
BSDobelix 2y ago
It's so sad that all the work on Minix3 has stopped.
talideon 2y ago
I'm genuinely surprised this hasn't happened already!
nsbk 2y ago
Hell yeah! Well deserved. I had a blast with some of his books. Especially _Operating Systems: Design and Implementation_ and _Computer Networks_. Legend
geekraver 2y ago
Along with K&R (and K and Plauger’s “Software Tools”), the Dragon book, Bentley’s Programming Pearls, and Holzmann’s Beyond Photography, AST’s books were the most formative in my life (I started coding in 1976 but was self-taught until early 80s when I got to college and read all these brilliant works). Long overdue recognition; so many people benefited from the lucidity of these minds.
sciencesama 2y ago
Well ge wrote complex textbooks that spoiled my college days

381 points by JacobAldridge 2y ago

IIRC, Structured Computer Organization played the same role for me, back in the day, that I think From Nand to Tetris has for many of you all.

SkyMarshal 2y ago

Well-deserved, congrats Andrew. I still have his distributed systems textbooks from way back when, and still wish Minix had won and its microkernel model had become the basis of the FOSS *nix ecosystem. Also in case anyone is not aware, Andrew runs the election science blog Electoral Vote [1], using an electoral college poll model to analyze and predict US elections. One of the better US political sites out there. [1]:https://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2024/Info/welcome.html https://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2024/Info/welcome.html

nicwolff 2y ago
People should know that electoral-vote.com is not just an election science blog at this point; Andrew and his co-writer Christopher Bates publish a very cogent summary each morning of the previous day's political news and its possible effects on US politics. You could read only their dispassionate but witty daily posts and be a reasonably well informed American citizen.

fermigier 2y ago

I read Operating Systems: Design and Implementation in 1988 or 1989, and it was an insightful and pleasing experience. I only wished, at the time, that there was some Unix-like OS that was "free" (for some intuitive value of the word "free", rather than the formal definition, which I hadn't heard of yet at the time). This could have been Minix.

trollied 2y ago
It was one of my degree course books. Thoroughly enjoyed it!
andyjohnson0 2y ago
One of the best textbooks I had to read for my degree, back in the 80s. The appendix containg the Minix source code was my first exposure to a large body of well-written C code.

michh 2y ago

Not to mention MINIX is hidden away in almost every modern Intel CPU as part of its Management Engine. This little known fact makes it one of the most widely distributed operating systems.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
Rochus 2y ago
Why did they use Minix and not e.g. L4 or sel4? Which version of Minix did they actually use? There is Minix v3.1 (released in 2005 with the book), 3.2 (released in 2012) and 3.3 (released in 2014).
- actionfromafar 2y ago
  Or Minix 2?
- michh 2y ago
  As to why, no idea. I guess some engineer was just familiar with it from their undergrad days like the rest of us. And which version, I know it’s MINIX 3 but beyond that? No idea. They probably heavily modified it and as Minix is not GPL, Intel never published it. Based on the timelines it’s likely 3.1 as the ME platform has heen around since approximately 2007 iirc.
  - Rochus 2y ago
    > it’s likely 3.1 as the ME platform has heen around since approximately 2007 Then I guess it's one of the 3.1.3x versions released in 2007 (see https://github.com/Stichting-MINIX-Research-Foundation/minix/tags https://github.com/Stichting-MINIX-Research-Foundation/minix...), or maybe 3.1.2 from 2006, depending how long hey had to implement the ME.
- looperhacks 2y ago
  The original L4 (I believe) wasn't commercially available und sel4 is GPL licensed. Minix has a BSD license, so maybe that's why

ivankolev 2y ago

Still have a cd-rom with copy of minix3, from when he had a talk in my university. His books on OS and Networking are very approachable and fun read!

alphabeta2024 2y ago

I was failing badly in my computer architecture courses. Received a 5% score in one of the mid-terms. Switched from the recommended book to Andrew's book and did nothing apart from read it everyday for 2 hours. Received 100% in the final. Such an amazingly approachable book. :-)

blast 2y ago
Wow. Which book?
- kenniskrag 2y ago
  One of these: https://media.pearsoncmg.com/bc/abp/cs-resources/products/series.html#series,series=Tanenbaum https://media.pearsoncmg.com/bc/abp/cs-resources/products/se...
jdougan 2y ago
Out of curiosity, which was the recommended book?
- asp_hornet 2y ago
  Not OP but if it was computer architecture i imagine it would be “structured computer organisation”. One if my favourite books on computers and looking at the comments, many people here too. Source: this book got me top marks too
- trueismywork 2y ago
  Some horrible local author whose name I now forget. Andrew's book was Structred Computer Organization
grugagag 2y ago
I had Tannenbaum books in in two of my CS courses too 2 decades back. They were great textbooks, found them quite accessible too

emporas 2y ago

I have read Tanenbaum's book twice. Really great book. Very dense in information but enjoyable as well. That and the Common Lisp Reference Manual were at some point my favorite CS readings. I was reading them in printed form.

alex_suzuki 2y ago
Which one? He has written more than one great book. :-)
- emporas 2y ago
  Yeah i didn't specify, i think it is the "Modern Operating Systems". I read it in Greek and I don't remember the title, maybe the title was translated a little bit different. It was not the Minix book, i have not read that unfortunately. Now however, i am sold on the idea of the Lisp Machine. Hopefully some day a lisp OS and hardware will be a viable way to use a computer.

alex_suzuki 2y ago

His book “Computer Networks” was one of my favourites in my CompSci study days. Many years later I gave lectures on Distributed Systems at a business school and based the material on the book. Still feels relevant, even today.

globular-toast 2y ago
This was my favourite textbook of my entire undergrad CS studies. I still have it on my shelf to this day. I've never gone deep into networking but the broad knowledge has stayed with me and comes in useful again and again. I would say it sets me apart from many other engineers.
supriyo-biswas 2y ago
Although this is a thread about Tanenbaum, personally I feel that Data Communications and Networking by Forouzan helps explain things in a better way and goes into the details of each network layer. Modern Operating Systems is great though, and when I was in college I've recommended it to peers whose feedback was along the same lines.

fancyfredbot 2y ago

This is a richly deserved award for a great educator who makes computer science both accessible and enjoyable. Structures computer organisation is supposed to be a textbook but it's written so well I found myself reading it cover to cover like a thriller. You won't find many people saying that about Knuth for example (not to say anything against Knuth who is amazing in his own way).

GTP 2y ago

It's funny to see how they highlight that it inspired Linux, ehile Tanenbaum heavily criticized it for not being a microkernel :D

LeFantome 2y ago
Well, it “inspired” Linux because Linus was unhappy with Minix. Linus wanted UNIX and Minix was not what he was looking for. I don’t think emulating Minix itself was ever his goal. He chose the Minix file system originally but this was just pragmatic as that is what his drive was formatted with. The earliest versions of Linux were written on Minix though. Credit where credit is due. Interestingly, Linus was unaware of BSD. He has said that, if he had known about it, he may never have written Linux to begin with.
- gpvos 2y ago
  When Linux was written BSD was still encumbered by non-BSD-licensed AT&T code. That changed a year or so later.
- GTP 2y ago
  IIRC the very first installations of Linix started with Minix as a base, that then was "patched" into Linux. So it was more than just the filesystem. But yes, Torvalds wasn't happy with Minix, and Tanenbaum wasn't happy with Linux.
- guiambros 2y ago
  The whole flame war between the two is worth a read [1], at least for historical reasons; very different points of view. And while Linus disagreed with Tanenbaum's POV, I Tanenbaum's criticism to Linux made it actually better. [1] https://groups.google.com/g/comp.os.minix/c/wlhw16QWltI#9f3c7c165aacc83f https://groups.google.com/g/comp.os.minix/c/wlhw16QWltI#9f3c...
  - kalleboo 2y ago
    My favorite thing about that whole thread is the unanimous consensus among everyone involved that we will all be running GNU/Hurd in 2 years so these stopgap OSes are just academic hobbies.

latenightcoding 2y ago

is MINIX abandonware now? Many years ago I tried to install the release that works (or comes bundled) with a light window manager but it was not trivial and it looked pretty abandoned even back then.

boricj 2y ago
MINIX3's development has stalled years ago. Basically, around MINIX 3.2.0 (just before I stated contributing) the OS ditched its homegrown userland and adopted the NetBSD source tree + pkgsrc. While that boosted the software compatibility of MINIX3 in the short term, the maintenance burden of keeping up with upstream with such a large diff proved unsustainable in the long term, especially after the grant money dried up. In hindsight, my opinion is that MINIX3 should've gone with NetBSD binary compatibility. The NetBSD syscall table would've been a far slower moving target to keep up with than the entire NetBSD source tree. The OS also had a significant amount of tech debt, especially in the microkernel which was uniprocessor and 32-bit only, as well as outdated hardware support which meant nobody was daily-driving it anymore. It also was an aging design: while the system was divided up into user-mode servers with message-based communication, you couldn't containerize a process by spawning a parallel userland ecosystem for example because it wasn't capability-based or namespaceable. It's too bad really, because the base system had really impressive capabilities. It could transparently survive crashes of stateless drivers, even when stress-testing it by injecting faults into the drivers at runtime. You could live-update the various system services at runtime without losing state or impacting clients. Some really good papers came out of MINIX3 [1]. I've ranted more in detail before, both on HN [2] as well on Google Groups [3]. I do not fault the maintainers for the current state of affairs because keeping up the MINIX3 userland against modern software standards was a major maintenance burden, so adopting NetBSD's one way or another was inevitable. At any rate, there are other micro-kernel based operating systems [4], some under active development, so MINIX's spirit lives on. [1] https://wiki.minix3.org/doku.php?id=publications https://wiki.minix3.org/doku.php?id=publications [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34916261 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34916261 [3] https://groups.google.com/g/minix3/c/qUdPZ0ansVw/m/7LuOv0YOAQAJ https://groups.google.com/g/minix3/c/qUdPZ0ansVw/m/7LuOv0YOA... [4] http://www.microkernel.info/ http://www.microkernel.info/

electrodank 2y ago

I see ASTs books, in particular the hands-on Minix ones, as sitting on the same “plane” as the philosophy espoused in The Night Watch paper. Ultimately the paper is about a level of comfort with reality that is at it’s core rooted in familiarity with rather than ignorance due to abstractions, and having learned fearlessness rather than helplessness. While it is highly unlikely you will be having a debugging session that has you executing kernel-level code alongside having an oscilloscope/logic probe hooked up to the pins of a processor chip to monitor data lines (though we all know someone who does this without a second thought), having this level of knowledge and comfort with being ever so slightly closer to the silicone, the data sheet of the processor somewhere near by, the memory segmentation modes not too alien of a concept, is a great boon to a software developer. It is a leap that I think everyone should try just once, and with it, abolish any notion of mental barriers that prevent one from understanding how things really work.

ginko 2y ago

It's kind of sad systems research pretty much stopped at this point. I really was hoping that by 2024 I'd be running a distributed operating system where processes could be be freely migrated between my phone, desktop, laptop and NAS without too much of a hitch.

fooker 2y ago
The research has not stalled at all, the incentive to make consumer devices has because of the capture by tech giants. If someone wanted to implement an interesting idea like this, they would be harshly judged for not being able to compete with pixels and iphones for the rest of the stack. See Rabbit for example. What you are describing is the bread and butter of modern systems research and all the large cloud providers internally implement this kind of thing.
sangnoir 2y ago
If you really wanted to do this, it would be fairly trivial to implement with Erlang/Elixir. We have thr technology - just no motivation (i.e. no profit in it)
- rramadass 2y ago
  Hey! Don't let out the secrets :-) This is something i have been long thinking about (but have done nothing practical so far). The problem is how to bridge/shim between Erlang and those platforms which do not support it eg. Android (though some people seem to have done it - https://github.com/JeromeDeBretagne/erlanglauncher https://github.com/JeromeDeBretagne/erlanglauncher). Joe Armstrong actually called the Erlang/OTP System as a AOS (Application Operating System) in his paper i.e. it contains much of the functionality of a traditional OS but people seem to ignore it and insist on calling it "just another language".
  - sangnoir 2y ago
    IMO, you lose half the benefits by shimming OTP (genserver, hot-reload). Platform owners like Apple or Google could easily make Erlang processes first class citizens on their Unix(-like) platforms - one can already run full-fledged Erlang/OTP processes on Android (via Termux). I imagine in an alternative universe were interoperability is more profitable than walled gardens, this technology exist and was standardized and not just a preserve of a few services on iDevices that can "hand-off" to each other (without process migration)

rossant 2y ago

He wrote great books. I am ashamed to admit his OS book served as a monitor support on my desk for some time.

thr0waway001 2y ago

Man, his Computer Networks books were dense but they had a lot of good stuff in them. They also had really good and fun looking covers.

santiagobasulto 2y ago

I’ll never forget this. I was listening to a talk by Reed Hastings (Netflix Founder/CEO) at (I think was) Stanford. He was explaining how he came up with the idea of Netflix. A student asked: “when did you realize you had to switch to the internet”. At which he replied: “that was the idea from the beginning. We knew networks were going to become what they are today. Look, there’s a saying in a CS textbook that says: ‘never underestimate the bandwidth of a truck full of tapes over the interstate’. We knew we had to ship the DVDs first until at some point the network would reach our desired level”. While I was watching that i said: “DUDE! I remember that quote (and that illustration)”. Went to my text book and there it was. In Tanenbaum’s networking textbook. Aside from the anecdote, this guy has had a huge influence in the whole industry (not even mentioning the Kernel debates).

Upvoter33 2y ago
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sneakernet https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sneakernet Has some pointers to the orig source
jldugger 2y ago
Imagine naming your company "Netflix" and saying "naw, the internet is a fad."

Sporktacular 2y ago

So what is the outcome of the kernel war? Performant micro-kernels have settled it no?

pridkett 2y ago

Another awesome fact about Tanenbaum is that he was the person behind electoral-vote.com. Prior to everyone having their own model and Nate Silver (err, should I say Poblano?) running the table in 2008, this was the place to go understand the 2004 US Presidential Election between Bush and Kerry. Hugely helpful for many people to understand polling and statistics.

quesera 2y ago
> he was the person behind electoral-vote.com electoral-vote.com is still going strong: https://www.electoral-vote.com/ https://www.electoral-vote.com/ I'm sure you know this, but I want to emphasize it for anyone who is not aware. Prof Tanenbaum has a co-writer now (Prof Bates, history at UCLA/Cal Poly), and the site is published every day (used to be weekdays only and only during election cycles).

bouvin 2y ago

I was myself taught Computer Architecture in 1991 using the Tanenbaum SCO book, and many years later taught the Computer Architecture course for four years using the SCO book (a later edition, but still!). A true classic, and if anything, it is a wonder that Tanenbaum had not already received the award.

kleiba 2y ago

Err, perhaps I'm missing something, but if the ACM Software System Award is presented to an institution or individual(s) recognized for developing a software system that has had a lasting influence, how come Linus hasn't got his yet?

surajrmal 2y ago
I wonder if they simply don't want to reward his toxicity.
- ohmyiv 2y ago
  Damn, how'd you get stuck in the pre-2018 era? Come stay in the present, things are alright.
intelVISA 2y ago
Perhaps a consolation prize that Linus doesn't need...

NonEUCitizen 2y ago

The Amsterdam Compiler Kit is also his work (along with Ceriel Jacobs): https://github.com/davidgiven/ack Just as Minix perhaps could've been Linux, The Amsterdam Compiler Kit could've been gcc, but for licensing issues: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2001/apr/10/firstchapters.highereducation4 https://www.theguardian.com/books/2001/apr/10/firstchapters....

eimrine 2y ago

I want to appreciate Andrew Tanenbaum for making possible the world's most popular OS, Intel ME. This system has been made absolutely right in every its piece except license. Minix under GPL would not let megagorporations to backdoor every functional x86 chip on the planet.

hun3 2y ago
What keeps it from becoming a free software backdoor?
- luyu_wu 2y ago
  GPL would theoretically force ME to open its source code.
  - hun3 2y ago
    Yes, so an open source...backdoor.
BSDobelix 2y ago
>right in every its piece except license. But then it would not be the "most popular OS" right? Whats your logic here?
SkyMarshal 2y ago
A different license wouldn't change that. They would just find some way to do it with BSD or some other OS.

Abishek_Muthian 2y ago

I came across Tanenbaum's Operating Systems book during my CS and it had a huge influence over me, till then I was a huge Windows nerd and after reading the book I felt like I was being cheated by Windows, like I was denied something which was rightfully mine. I hated my labs as it had only Windows, started exploring *nix systems post class and never went back. Thank you Mr.Andrew and congratulations.

pyeri 2y ago

Anyone remembers the legendary Torvalds-Tanenbaum debates? What were they exacly about?

rramadass 2y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanenbaum%E2%80%93Torvalds_debate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanenbaum%E2%80%93Torvalds_deb...
SkyMarshal 2y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40761968 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40761968

rramadass 2y ago

Every student should read Tanenbaum's "Structured Computer Organization". It was the first book which showed me the logical layering involved in a "Computer System" which is absolutely essential to understanding this field.

braza 2y ago

For who does not know, his books used as textbook in South American universities for years during 90s.

BSDobelix 2y ago

It's so sad that all the work on Minix3 has stopped.

talideon 2y ago

I'm genuinely surprised this hasn't happened already!

nsbk 2y ago

Hell yeah! Well deserved. I had a blast with some of his books. Especially _Operating Systems: Design and Implementation_ and _Computer Networks_. Legend

geekraver 2y ago

Along with K&R (and K and Plauger’s “Software Tools”), the Dragon book, Bentley’s Programming Pearls, and Holzmann’s Beyond Photography, AST’s books were the most formative in my life (I started coding in 1976 but was self-taught until early 80s when I got to college and read all these brilliant works). Long overdue recognition; so many people benefited from the lucidity of these minds.

sciencesama 2y ago

Well ge wrote complex textbooks that spoiled my college days