Minix development has been abandoned? • Hacker News Board

Re: Minix development has been abandoned?

#41

Post by jonhohle » Thu, May 25, 2023, 12:12 AM UTC

lolinder wrote: post #34

tambourine_man wrote: post #4

Can’t software be done? No known bugs, all features in a proposed scope written. Done and done.

> No known bugs This is the part that I doubt will ever be achieved by any system or structure of moderate complexity or above. Everything that exists in the real world has problems with it. If it's a building or a machine, then it's done once it's built unless there are major safety issues. The cost of fixing non-critical issues in a physical product is too high to justify. The problem with software is that the marg…

> If it's a building or a machine, then it's done once it's built…

Modern construction requires a significant amount of maintenance. The Romans on the other hand, they knew how to build a building!

Re: Minix development has been abandoned?

#42

Post by blown_gasket » Thu, May 25, 2023, 12:14 AM UTC

durandaul_xx wrote: post #33

I'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?

For both military and space applications, I believe that real-time operating systems are employed. Minix is not in the sphere of RTOS.

Re: Minix development has been abandoned?

#43

Post by lolinder » Thu, May 25, 2023, 12:17 AM UTC

jonhohle wrote: post #41

lolinder wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No known bugs This is the part that I doubt will ever be achieved by any system or structure of moderate complexity or above. Everything that exists in the real world has problems with it. If it's a building or a machine, then it's done once it's built unless there are major safety issues. The cost of fixing non-critical issues in a physical product is too high to justify. The problem with software is that the marg…

> If it's a building or a machine, then it's done once it's built… Modern construction requires a significant amount of maintenance. The Romans on the other hand, they knew how to build a building!

That's fair, but we'd still consider the building to be "done" in the sense that OP means—the construction crew can go home.

When I refer to problems that go unaddressed I'm thinking of problems like "this bathroom is too small", not "the roof needs replacing".

Re: Minix development has been abandoned?

#44

Post by MuffinFlavored » Thu, May 25, 2023, 12:24 AM UTC

wkat4242 wrote: post #39

Technically 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…

> it required 386 specific features like task switching

i thought this was a kernel/OS level concept, could you expand more?

Re: Minix development has been abandoned?

#45

Post by dotnwat » Thu, May 25, 2023, 12:27 AM UTC

zellyn wrote: post #5

The 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

He is one of the folks behind https://www.electoral-vote.com/ which I think must take up a lot of time.

Re: Minix development has been abandoned?

#46

Post by wkat4242 » Thu, May 25, 2023, 12:32 AM UTC

MuffinFlavored wrote: post #44

wkat4242 wrote: post #39

Technically 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…

> it required 386 specific features like task switching i thought this was a kernel/OS level concept, could you expand more?

I'm not qualified to explain but the first answer to this question captures it well I think:

https://retrocomputing.stackexchange.com/questions/26516/wha...

Re: Minix development has been abandoned?

#47

Post by js2 » Thu, May 25, 2023, 12:35 AM UTC

MuffinFlavored wrote: post #44

wkat4242 wrote: post #39

Technically 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…

> it required 386 specific features like task switching i thought this was a kernel/OS level concept, could you expand more?

x86 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

Re: Minix development has been abandoned?

#48

Post by nequo » Thu, May 25, 2023, 12:39 AM UTC

wkat4242 wrote: post #40

csdreamer7 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That 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.

That's a different usecase. Linux is good for general computing. Intel specifically wanted something they could close down as much as possible.

So if Minix was under GPL, Intel would probably have gone with NetBSD or FreeBSD. Or possibly something different altogether.

Re: Minix development has been abandoned?

#49

Post by msla » Thu, May 25, 2023, 12:49 AM UTC

cyanydeez wrote: post #12

msla wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, software can't be done, because the hardware platform it runs on continues to change.

Perpetual growth is a myth, even in software. Things like Docker demonstrate all that matters is encapsulation by those interested in keeping these projects live.

Perpetual growth, nothing. CPUs and graphics hardware changes, so the OS has to change.

Re: Minix development has been abandoned?

#50

Post by Gigachad » Thu, May 25, 2023, 1:01 AM UTC

csdreamer7 wrote: post #38

Gigachad wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then no one would be using it at all and Intel would pick the next OS project to use.

That 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.

I presume the point of the OP comment is that Intel ME is bad malware, and that its creation could have been prevented by making Minix GPL. Intel could have quite easily used just about any project, and there are plenty that are permissively licensed, or they could have just created one from scratch if needed.