anyone tried Minix 3?

[billdotson]

has anyone tried Minix 3? I am downloading it right now and wanted to know what general thoughts on it are.

[mips]

No but don't expect to much.

[billdotson]

hmm.. that doesn't sound too positive..

[mips]

hmm.. that doesn't sound too positive..

By that i mean it is not going to be Ubuntu or SUSE etc. It's still new and as with all things new it usually does not live up to peoples expectations. I dont think the intended use was everyday desktop use but i could be wrong.

It's small so try it out. I myself am thinking of sticking it on a usb stick just 'to see'.

[billdotson]

oh ok. I am not looking for a desktop replacement I just want to see how an OS with a microkernel runs mainly

[Quillz]

By that i mean it is not going to be Ubuntu or SUSE etc. It's still new and as with all things new it usually does not live up to peoples expectations. I dont think the intended use was everyday desktop use but i could be wrong.

It's small so try it out. I myself am thinking of sticking it on a usb stick just 'to see'.
I think Minix is intended as more of a tutorial OS, from the sense that it was designed to be easy to use and learn. There's no reason you couldn't use it on a desktop, but I wouldn't want to.

It's interesting to think though that it's this OS that Linux used to design Linux. Kind of makes Minix the unofficial father of Linux.

[mips]

It's interesting to think though that it's this OS that Linux used to design Linux. Kind of makes Minix the unofficial father of Linux.

Not quite true. Torvalds did not like minix. If you search the net you can find out a bit more of the history and the slug fest the two creators had.

[Quillz]

Not quite true. Torvalds did not like minix. If you search the net you can find out a bit more of the history and the slug fest the two creators had.
They may have not necessarily liked each other, but Linux was still based (at least very early on) partially on Minix. In fact, doesn't Linux even stand for "Linus's Minix?"

[maddog39]

Yea, linux was derived from minix (the name). I have tried Minix 3, and infact its still installed on VMware. But.... Xorg does not work out of the box from the CD as it advertises. It is completely unconfigured and if you try to compile another version, the package manager freaks out and it fails the compile. I still dont have any working GUI. GNOME, KDE, and or XFCE will not work on minix as far as I know. It's really mostly a command line, so just be warned.

[melancholeric]

They may have not necessarily liked each other, but Linux was still based (at least very early on) partially on Minix. In fact, doesn't Linux even stand for "Linus's Minix?"
No.

Well, very early on, you needed minix to compile and install linux, but that's about it. Here's something about this from prof. Tanembaum himself: http://www.cs.vu.nl/~ast/brown/

Yea, linux was derived from minix (the name).
And wrong. Torvalds originally called linux "phreax", but the admin of the ftp site he was hosting it on (Ari something, I forget the name now ... ) changed the directory to "linux", and the name stuck.

Linus did get a copy of Minix, and the source code, and figured he could do better. He did not use minix code in it at all (and that would have bviolated the minix license too). He did, however, learn quite a lot about os design from it. Both, what works, and more importantly, what does not work.

[madmetal]

minix and minix2 are mainly for tutorials and learnign purposes..
minix3 is a try to make minix more like a real OS..