
Minix 3.3.0 - knz42
http://www.minix3.org/330.html
======
jacquesm
I've upvoted this because I would like to see minix succeed and for nostalgic
reasons but I can't help the feeling that minix has missed its window of
opportunity. In practically every arena where minix could have established
itself there are now formidable entities entrenched with mindshare, budgets
and an installed base that minix can't even begin to touch. I've got similar
feelings towards plan 9.

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.

I'm quite sad about this, I think that if minix had been open instead of
'published as a book' that minix would have been what Linux is today only
better engineered and that we'd all be better off for that.

Not being GPL'd meant that a whole generation of hackers followed Linus
Torvalds rather than buying a bunch of books from Prentice Hall. And so now we
have 70's era tech instead of 90's.

~~~
VLM
"minix has a spot, and that spot is in education,"

Yet they're pushing for reliable embedded hardware. Not all that bad of an
idea. Given the nightmare of android security updates (or complete lack there
of) this would make a nice embedded controller.

Need RTOS features. For .edu or .com embedded use.

The microkernel idea is pretty much dead outside the ivory tower, as in
practice it didn't work, so I wouldn't be so pessimistic about how things
turned out.

~~~
valarauca1
>as in practice it didn't work

QNX says, "Hi." Nearly every router with >1GB/s ports run a microkernel.

Blackberry's phones run microkernels.

Yeah its closed source locked down, but its a functioning high performance
micro-kernel.

~~~
mwcampbell
> Nearly every router with >1GB/s ports run a microkernel.

Do you mean home wireless routers, or higher-end routers? I thought most home
wireless routers these days, including gigabite-capable ones, were running
Linux. Can you give specific examples?

~~~
noselasd
Here's one:
[http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/routers/crs-1-multishe...](http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/routers/crs-1-multishelf-
system/index.html)

Here's another:
[http://www.infinera.com/products/dtn.html](http://www.infinera.com/products/dtn.html)

------
peatmoss
The choice to use a NetBSD userland isn't hugely surprising in light of the
project's focus on making everything as clean and portable as possible.
Packages also make a lot of sense. NetBSD did something hugely ambitious with
Pkgsrc--it is like FreeBSD's ports, but was designed to build software in a
coherent fashion on lots of different *nix platforms. At one point in time, I
was using pkgsrc to build a somewhat complicated custom stack of open source
software on AIX, compiling with IBM's XLC compiler. Can't say everything
worked perfectly, but there was so much scaffolding already in place with
pkgsrc that it simplified my process immeasurably.

------
f2f
I feel this document really captures the feeling that OS researchers had at
the turn of the century:

[http://herpolhode.com/rob/utah2000.pdf](http://herpolhode.com/rob/utah2000.pdf)

On one hand you had Windows NT taking over commercial space, on the other you
had the Linux juggernaut gathering speed. There was not much left for the
niche players.

Glad to see Minix survives still.

------
runeks
From a technological point of view, I think Minix looks really interesting.
Especially the feature of a driver being able to crash, and not crashing the
entire system. Security is also an added bonus.

But, it seems to me that it's not really usable for most people, since driver
support is very poor.

I would really like to know, if anyone knows the answer, how much effort it
would take to create some sort of tool that converts a Linux driver to a
Minix-compatible driver, or -- if that's not possible -- how many man hours it
would take to rewrite ALL Linux drivers to be Minix-compatible. Anyone know?

~~~
justincormack
You can use the NetBSD drivers pretty much anywhere including in another
kernel - see [http://rumpkernel.org/](http://rumpkernel.org/) \- and they are
already using NetBSD userspace code in Minix. I was planning to talk to them
at eurobsdcon about this, after a few mailing list conversations.

~~~
reirob
This is really a great project and has big potential in my opinion.

Discovered it here on Hacker News some time ago [0]. But it did not get much
attention. I would love to hear more opinions from HN on this topic.

[0]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8313144](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8313144)

------
moo
I'm suspicious that some people complain about dated technology and want
something fresh not because the dated tech is obsolete or crippled but because
they want to be an expert on new tech, starting from a level playing field and
not have to catch up with people with a 20+ year head start.

------
thomasfl
Minix, the only *nix I've ever modified or recompiled.

------
jingo
There is only one question I ask to Minix: How much space and time does it
take these days to compile a Minix kernel?

The current system I use takes about 220MB of RAM and about 15min on an
underpowered netbook. (It is not Linux but still has decent hardware support.)

Of course I'm also curious what other folks who compile their own Linux
kernels see as their "minimum" requirements.

------
stevedekorte
AFAICS, Minix's model will win in the end because security will be the most
important OS feature in the future. It's a matter of time before our life
savings (crypto-currencies), all personal info, and even our lives (self
driving cars, medical equipment) inevitably becomes dependent on the security
of our computer(s).

~~~
wolfgke
There are kernels available that place more emphasis on security than Minix,
say seL4 or EROS and Coyotos for more academic approaches.

------
jmcejuela
I'm not understanding much from this thread's conversation. I'm not so
interested in OS development (anymore).

Yet I'm reading the conversation in full due to the great, knowledgable, and
foremost _polite_ discussions. Not having seen this in Hacker News in a long
time...

Thank you all

------
LeonM
Nice to see they have finally gotten to ARM support. I've worked on an MINIX3
ARM port for my thesis. Got really close to a running system but never got to
finishing it after I got my degree.

Gonna try it out tonight!

------
indielol
I wonder if anybody uses minix in production anymore.

~~~
jethro_tell
I'd love to see some benchmarks if anyone actually does.

~~~
currysausage
If someone uses Minix in production, they most likely do so because they care
about reliability above all else.

[http://wiki.minix3.org/FAQ#What_is_the_performance_of_MINIX_...](http://wiki.minix3.org/FAQ#What_is_the_performance_of_MINIX_3_like.3F)

~~~
SEJeff
No. If they cared above reliability above all else, they'd be more likely to
use something like HP's nonstop systems, which are from their Compaq purchase,
where were from Tandem. You can hotswap the motherboards of those things with
0 downtime.

They run the backend of much of the airline industry (former delta employee).

Edit:

Links with more information for those not aware of these behemoths:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NonStop](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NonStop)

[http://h17007.www1.hp.com/us/en/enterprise/servers/integrity...](http://h17007.www1.hp.com/us/en/enterprise/servers/integrity/nonstop.aspx?jumpid=go/integritynonstop&404m=rt404Mb#.VBh8c3VdWEI)

~~~
jacquesm
Or Erlang.

~~~
currysausage
Erlang?

------
luckydude
Has anyone benchmarked this? lmbench (I'm biased) or something else?

------
ajessup
One way to spur adoption, let's see a Yocto BSB for this

------
fithisux
It would b interesting if minix could reuse the work done on mirageos by
importing ocaml and build user space drivers in ocaml to be used by other
programs.

------
xyproto
Looks cool, but what is this "printing" and "CD-ROM" it is talking about?

------
jamesdavidson
This is real hacker news!

