news@daver.bungi.com (10/21/90)
I'm curious--I've just started playing with MINIX 1.5 on a IBM PClone, and from FTPing around the world I've seen quite a few interesting extensions for MINIX. So I'm trying to get a feel for what people are doing, and what remains to be done when I get my pc532 up--what's do people with pc532's find most useful? Something like shoelace, or the virtual consoles package? I've even seen a symbolic links package for MINIX. Obviously somebody's ported a variant of of UUCP, and Bash as a mail user agent. GCC. The Clam shell? Also: when will the port of MINIX 1.5 be done? (To whomever may be working on this: don't interpret this as "nagging", I'm just curious). Is there any plan to convert "minix-532" for virtual memory? An alternative to this is just to get a lot of RAM. Anyone have a pc532 with a full 32MB (~ $2000) of DRAM? :-) Question: will the current minix (either generic from AST or minix-532) swap complete processes to disk when it runs out of memory? (i.e. max process size is still limited by size of physical memory, but idle processes don't take up any ram). I ask because this seems considerably simpler to impliment than a full virtual memory system and yet gives many of the advantages. For a single-user system, it's most common (at least the way _I_ work) to have many processes, but only one or three are active at any time. Opinions? Perhaps this should go in comp.os.minix too... Thanks for the info. Mark Mark Shepard shepard@decpa.pa.dec.com shepard@gatekeeper.dec.com
culberts@hplwbc.hpl.hp.com (Bruce Culbertson) (10/30/90)
> ...I'm trying to get a feel for what people are doing, and > what remains to be done when I get my pc532 up--what's do people with > pc532's find most useful? > > Something like shoelace, or the virtual consoles package? I've even > seen a symbolic links package for MINIX. Obviously somebody's ported > a variant of of UUCP, and Bash as a mail user agent. GCC. The Clam shell? I have ported GCC and distribute it with pc532-Minix. I often use Clam though I am not completely satisfied with it. I also am interested if anyone is using bash. I use bash at work and like it. However, the bash executable for my 680x0 workstation is about 500k so I wonder how it will perform on pc532-Minix. I also use the SC spreadsheet and xscheme scheme interpretter. > Also: when will the port of MINIX 1.5 be done? (To whomever may be working > on this: don't interpret this as "nagging", I'm just curious). I am working on 1.5. In fact, the Minix I use is a hybrid consisting of 1.5 MM, 1.5 FS, and a slightly modified 1.3 kernel. The 1.5 kernel process switching code is ready for testing. People who read this mailing list regularly know that my 1.5 Minix has been at this stage for some time. I feel guilty that it is not done yet but, unfortunately, I have had very little spare time recently. In fact, I have been out of town for four of the last six weeks and am writing this from Japan! I hope to get back to work on Minix when I return to the U.S. next week. > Is there any plan to convert "minix-532" for virtual memory? This is what I would like to work on after the 1.5 upgrade. But don't hold your breath! > Question: will the current minix (either generic from AST or minix-532) > swap complete processes to disk when it runs out of memory? No, neither standard Minix nor pc532-Minix swap. I understand the argument for it but, personally, find the idea of implementing VM more interesting. Bruce