
XINU OS – Xinu Is Not Unix - tmlee
http://www.xinu.cs.purdue.edu/
======
ecma
More important than the acronym is the effort itself. XINU is a really
interesting project and probably the second OS I was introduced to outside of
the POSIXy neighbourhood. It differs from a lot of other projects in that its
goals (to my understanding) were very different to the usual approach toward
providing POSIX compliance or a platform intended to support layering POSIX on
top of a base architecture.

I picked up an old copy of the textbook and never read it. Maybe this is the
kick I needed to pick up the newer edition and actually check it out in
earnest!

~~~
kabdib
When I first learned C I also read Lions' Notes on v6 Unix, and kind of saw
what was going on, but the XINU book really drove home how kernels worked. The
XINU book on internetworking was similarly great.

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ZenoArrow
Is there a document or video that gives an overview of the XINU architecture?

~~~
nickpsecurity
Seriously, as neither the website nor the Wikipedia article tell me crap about
that. Guess we're expected to buy a book... (sighs)

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talkingtab
Not to forget a Berkeley company from long ago called Mt Xinu. (Unix TM
backwards).

They made one of the funniest *nix related calendars ever among other good
things.

~~~
jgeorge
I still have a Mt. Xinu poster they put out in the mid 80s with a BSD X-Wing
fighter attacking the AT&T System V Death Star.

A more elegant poster, from a more civilized time.

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aidenn0
The license is here:
[https://www.cs.purdue.edu/homes/dec/xlicense.html](https://www.cs.purdue.edu/homes/dec/xlicense.html)
(I had to google for it)

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belltyler
I took the CS OS grad. course at Purdue last semester that taught OS
principles using XINU. Overall, I think the OS is great. Used primarily for
embedded systems (routers were the common example) it was simple, quite
extensible and fun to learn.

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feld
There is a FreeBSD-derived OS called Xinuos that is different than this and
caused me much confusion ...

[http://www.xinuos.com](http://www.xinuos.com)

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panglott
Not to be confused with...
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenu](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenu)

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aidenn0
Does anyone know if XINU is used in Purdue's undergrad OS classes these days?
I went there and it was not mentioned even once (took OS around '04). Most of
what we did was in Nachos[1]

1:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_Another_Completely_Heurist...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_Another_Completely_Heuristic_Operating_System)

~~~
LukeShu
XINU is used for CS354, the undergrad CS OS course (and has been for at least
the last 2 years). A different OS is used for the undergrad ECE OS course; I
think it may be Nachos, but I'm not sure.

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TacticalTable
Currently procrastinating on a project using Xinu at Purdue. Some of the
systems are dead basic, which makes it really great as a teaching tool.

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fiatjaf
"network communication, local and remote file systems"

~~~
dewyatt
Network communication sans TCP it appears.

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z1mm32m4n
See now this is my kind of acronym. Things like "gnu's not unix" are too
arbitrary; you can replace the 'g' with anything and still get an acronym that
works. XINU is nice, elegant, and unambiguous.

~~~
mongol
I don't see the difference..?

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krick
He is pointing out that leaving out "is" in "GNU is not Unix" is pretty lousy
way to make an acronym (if that could be called acronym at all), as "is" is as
much word as "not" or "Unix" are and omitting it is arbitrary. It isn't a
preposition or something.

~~~
nailer
Removing one and two letter words from acronyms is commonplace.

~~~
krick
Yeah, you mean prepositions, which "is" isn't. I don't really care, btw, just
clarifying what parent (probably) tried to say.

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nailer
> Yeah, you mean prepositions

No I don't. See
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acronym#Numerals_and_constitue...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acronym#Numerals_and_constituent_words)
and also
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etiquette](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etiquette)

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fallingbadgers
XINUL anyone?

~~~
anon4
Xinul Is Not (your) Uncle's Linux

