It's funny to see how they highlight that it inspired Linux, ehile Tanenbaum heavily criticized it for not being a microkernel :D
Andrew S. Tanenbaum Receives ACM Software System Award
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Re: Andrew S. Tanenbaum Receives ACM Software System Award
#22I 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. :-)
Wow. Which book?
Re: Andrew S. Tanenbaum Receives ACM Software System Award
#23is 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.
Re: Andrew S. Tanenbaum Receives ACM Software System Award
#24I 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.
Re: Andrew S. Tanenbaum Receives ACM Software System Award
#25It's funny to see how they highlight that it inspired Linux, ehile Tanenbaum heavily criticized it for not being a microkernel :D
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.
Re: Andrew S. Tanenbaum Receives ACM Software System Award
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
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).
The original L4 (I believe) wasn't commercially available und sel4 is GPL licensed. Minix has a BSD license, so maybe that's why
100% because of the license
Re: Andrew S. Tanenbaum Receives ACM Software System Award
#27I 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.
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.
Re: Andrew S. Tanenbaum Receives ACM Software System Award
#28Not 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.
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).
AIUI Sel4 is just a kernel, so adding all the "management engine crap" - networking stacks, drivers etc. would be a lot of work. Minix came with 'batteries' included.
Re: Andrew S. Tanenbaum Receives ACM Software System Award
#29It'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.
Re: Andrew S. Tanenbaum Receives ACM Software System Award
#30It's funny to see how they highlight that it inspired Linux, ehile Tanenbaum heavily criticized it for not being a microkernel :D
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 o…
When Linux was written BSD was still encumbered by non-BSD-licensed AT&T code. That changed a year or so later.