4 ms·

> Even so, minix has a spot, and that spot is in education, an OS that can function like a digital version of a petri dish, something that you can quickly morph

by shock 12y ago

> Even so, minix has a spot, and that spot is in education, an OS that can function like a digital version of a petri dish, something that you can quickly morph to test out a new idea without having to drag a huge behemoth of a kernel behind you. This is why I was surprised to see that the Raspberry Pi, which has a focus on education, was not on the list of supported boards. I would have loved to tinker with Minix on a Raspberry Pi (I have several boards lying around) since I have a latent interest in microkernels. I hope RPi will get supported later.

rootbear 12y ago
I expect a port to the Raspberry Pi will happen. The supported boards are all ARM v7, but the Pi is v6 and that is probably the reason it's not supported right out of the gate.
- wolfgke 12y ago
  Or the fact that you need a binary blob to boot an operating system on it.
  - me2i81 12y ago
    Or the fact that the board design is not open source, unlike the BeagleBone.
    - wolfgke 12y ago
      What do you miss of in the board schematics? > http://elinux.org/RPi_Hardware#Schematic_.2F_Layout http://elinux.org/RPi_Hardware#Schematic_.2F_Layout > http://www.raspberrypi.org/model-b-revision-2-0-schematics/ http://www.raspberrypi.org/model-b-revision-2-0-schematics/
      - me2i81 12y ago
        The problem is the copyright: "Design (c) 2011, 2012 Raspberry Pi Foundation All Rights Reserved" As far as I know the schematics are not open-source, i.e. there's no right to use them other than as documentation for the (proprietary) Raspberry Pi-manufactured board. The BeagleBone, on the other hand, has an open-source license for their schematic under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.
txutxu 12y ago
If the spot is education, I should say it has failed (maybe not in the US, I don't know there). Where I live, you can be happy if people knows what Linux is, maybe you find 1 between each 100 computer users. Teachers here does not know to program a lot. You can be happy if they are able to copy&paste commands, and blindly follow search engine results. Of course 100 of each 100 computer users know what android is (not what it means for their freedom, surveillance and privacy). And the market is full of java/android programmers making cry to any UNIX-like sysadmin or security expert with their code. Education here gets ipad and Microsoft stuff. With agreements hard to break. At much, you see a "fedora" computers room, on public universities, just to run a few mathematical programs on some careers, and nothing else. Out of certain universities, it's hard to find people doing things (even in the educational land) with minix.
- m-app 12y ago
  I think you misunderstood the use of the word education here. The grand-parent post did not mean the education community as a whole that is using (or even knows) Minix, but just that Minix is used to educate. Specifically educate Computer Science students on how OS's work.
reirob 12y ago
It's not even in their Roadmap: http://wiki.minix3.org/Roadmap http://wiki.minix3.org/Roadmap

by shock 12y ago

rootbear 12y ago

I expect a port to the Raspberry Pi will happen. The supported boards are all ARM v7, but the Pi is v6 and that is probably the reason it's not supported right out of the gate.

wolfgke 12y ago
Or the fact that you need a binary blob to boot an operating system on it.
- me2i81 12y ago
  Or the fact that the board design is not open source, unlike the BeagleBone.
  - wolfgke 12y ago
    What do you miss of in the board schematics? > http://elinux.org/RPi_Hardware#Schematic_.2F_Layout http://elinux.org/RPi_Hardware#Schematic_.2F_Layout > http://www.raspberrypi.org/model-b-revision-2-0-schematics/ http://www.raspberrypi.org/model-b-revision-2-0-schematics/
    - me2i81 12y ago
      The problem is the copyright: "Design (c) 2011, 2012 Raspberry Pi Foundation All Rights Reserved" As far as I know the schematics are not open-source, i.e. there's no right to use them other than as documentation for the (proprietary) Raspberry Pi-manufactured board. The BeagleBone, on the other hand, has an open-source license for their schematic under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.

txutxu 12y ago

If the spot is education, I should say it has failed (maybe not in the US, I don't know there). Where I live, you can be happy if people knows what Linux is, maybe you find 1 between each 100 computer users. Teachers here does not know to program a lot. You can be happy if they are able to copy&paste commands, and blindly follow search engine results. Of course 100 of each 100 computer users know what android is (not what it means for their freedom, surveillance and privacy). And the market is full of java/android programmers making cry to any UNIX-like sysadmin or security expert with their code. Education here gets ipad and Microsoft stuff. With agreements hard to break. At much, you see a "fedora" computers room, on public universities, just to run a few mathematical programs on some careers, and nothing else. Out of certain universities, it's hard to find people doing things (even in the educational land) with minix.

m-app 12y ago
I think you misunderstood the use of the word education here. The grand-parent post did not mean the education community as a whole that is using (or even knows) Minix, but just that Minix is used to educate. Specifically educate Computer Science students on how OS's work.

reirob 12y ago

It's not even in their Roadmap: http://wiki.minix3.org/Roadmap http://wiki.minix3.org/Roadmap