
Lessons Learned from 30 Years of MINIX - dcschelt
http://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2016/3/198874-lessons-learned-from-30-years-of-minix/fulltext
======
rogerbinns
It was unfortunate how Minix was distributed as a $69 book. It was very
expensive for a student. Inflation corrected it would be about $120 now.
However being in the UK meant the usual 1 USD = 1 GBP conversion (making it
cost about 50% more), not to mention VAT at another 15% on top - a total of
about $210 in today's money. I am pointing this out not because the pricing
was unreasonable, but because it was a big barrier to use. (At the same time a
full version of Windows 3.0 retailed for $149 or $79 (upgrade) - 1990 dollars.
You also required a copy of DOS.)

The article also mentions 32 bit support, but there was a lot of tension going
on. It was possible to make Minix perform a lot better by deeper platform
support and multi-threading components (especially the filesystem), but this
made the code more complex, longer and harder to understand. Consequently
there were two versions of Minix in use - the base true to the mission, and
big patch sets on top that made it more usable/performant. The latter were
distributed over the Internet.

This shows why Linux took off so quickly. There was no barrier to
participation like paying for the book. While functionality was a lot less,
there was no gatekeeper keeping it small, simple and educational. And Minix
had shown how to collaborate with patches to an operating system over the
Internet. It didn't take long for Linux to overtake Minix onto the path we see
today.

~~~
msbarnett
> It was unfortunate how Minix was distributed as a $69 book. It was very
> expensive for a student. Inflation corrected it would be about $120 now.

And in a good example of how textbook prices inflate at well above the general
rate of inflation, the current Minix 3 version retails for $176.

------
jcr
Down on the very bottom of the page is a seemingly mistyped link to the video
where Andy Tanenbaum discusses the lessons learned.

[http://cacm.acm.org/videos/lessons-learned-from-30-years-
of-...](http://cacm.acm.org/videos/lessons-learned-from-30-years-of-minix)

The above just redirects to vimeo:

[https://vimeo.com/154212224](https://vimeo.com/154212224)

------
snvzz
Working archive: [https://archive.is/lc5vT](https://archive.is/lc5vT)

------
bluedino
I could listen to Andy talks for hours. He has the greatest stories, so much
experience and wisdom. I wonder if he and Linus get along in person, I had a
100% different impression of this guy solely based on his flamewars with Linus
(who's probably the 'bad one')

~~~
jacquesm
I met Tanenbaum a couple of times when Minix was still very young, he's an
extremely nice and knowledgeable person.

------
hobo_mark
In a parallel universe: ten years ago Andy gets his grad students to port
MINIX 3 to ARM and turns it into the educational OS of choice for the
Raspberry pi.

------
krylon
Honest question: Is somebody using MINIX as a production system? I suppose it
is not very popular as a server system, but since its current target is
embedded use, are there any products built on/around MINIX?

~~~
david-given
Don't know, would be interested to find out.

FWIW: Minix 2 will _still_ get you a fully functional Unixoid on a PC XT with
8086 processor and 640kB RAM. (It'll run in less, but I assume you want to run
some processes in addition to the shell.)

And Minix 3 is a complete ground up rewrite, substantially more sophisticated,
with a ludicrously small footprint and NetBSD compatibility (I believe it
comes with NetBSD Ports).

~~~
phicoh
MINIX3 is not a ground up rewrite. It started off with the MINIX2 sources. A
lot has been added and changed. Mainly to provide complete fault isolation for
device drivers. (Aside from adding missing functionality)

------
degio
off topic but I think interesting: Andy Tanenbaum is also the creator and
maintainer of [http://www.electoral-vote.com/](http://www.electoral-
vote.com/), which I find to be one of best resources on american elections.

~~~
platform
Thx for the reference. I had no idea. I presume it reflects Andy's biases
(which is, of course, up to Andy)

    
    
      WRT Gov. Susana Martinez ....
    
      A good-looking Latina governor from a Western
      swing state  with a fiery conservative speaking
      style would be a good addition to any ticket.
    
      Comparisons will undoubtedly be  made to Sarah Palin,
      but Martinez is completely sane and is fluent in 
      two languages that Palin has little command of:
      Spanish and English.

~~~
digi_owl
> good-looking Latina

Someone is playing with fire...

------
ryenus
Is it just me thought it's hard to read a page w/o padding? Here is the
rescue: $('body').css('padding', '0 15px')

------
digi_owl
TIL that Ts'o has been with Linux since the early days.

------
yanowitz
ObOriginalTanenbaumTorvaldsConflictLink:
<[https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/comp.os.minix/wlhw16...](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/comp.os.minix/wlhw16QWltI%5B1-25%5D>)

Linus' personality is remarkably intact, 24 years later.

More background:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanenbaum%E2%80%93Torvalds_deb...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanenbaum%E2%80%93Torvalds_debate)

~~~
nickpsecurity
Relevant to their debate with modern elements:

[http://www.cs.vu.nl/~ast/reliable-os/](http://www.cs.vu.nl/~ast/reliable-os/)

[http://www.coyotos.org/docs/misc/linus-
rebuttal.html](http://www.coyotos.org/docs/misc/linus-rebuttal.html)

~~~
snvzz
Also:
[http://blog.darknedgy.net/technology/2016/01/01/0/](http://blog.darknedgy.net/technology/2016/01/01/0/)

~~~
nickpsecurity
Didn't know about that one. Had a few links and data new to me. Thanks for the
link!

------
seeing
_Lesson. If marketing the product according to plan A does not work, invent
plan B._

If you can make Minix run on a MacBook Air, _AND_ get wifi working without me
having to do anything, I'm willing to try it. Neither Linux nor FreeBSD have
been able to do this.

~~~
rubberstamp
linux mint seems to get drivers right. have you tried it? almost 4 years now
on mint. very stable to do dev work and web browsing without having to worry
about malware. it's not perfect but so far it's the one OS that gave me less
reasons to hate

having micro kernel and well architectured OS is great. but without equally
good gui, usability suffers

