cdh1@eds1.UUCP (C. Daniel Hassell) (10/17/90)
ast@cs.vu.nl (Andy Tanenbaum) writes: >In article <33514@nigel.ee.udel.edu> pezely@cis.udel.edu (Daniel Pezely) writes: >>I do understand what you're saying, but what about the students who >>want to learn about more advanced features of a high performance os? >Let them read Hwang & Briggs books. All 800+ pages of it, and small letters. >Andy Tanenbaum (ast@cs.vu.nl) I think Andy has a point here. What we have is a clash of intentions. Andy wrote the code to be educational and has gone to great pains to keep it so. Us users out here though, have laid down money to get a copy a would like it to be also useful for real work, and the bells and whistles being proposed would indeed aid its usefulness. I propose that we solve this by not pestering Andy to amend his elegant code, but rather develop an enhanced Minix, or perhaps Internet Minix, that has the features WE want. Someone will have to be designated as the keeper of the official source, and occasionally release a set of diffs relative to the most recent AST Minix, which is 1.5 right now. Minix was designed to be changed by users so I don't see why we can't work together on it. We could develop a consensus list of features we want to work toward, and see what happens. I do not want Andy to see this as a palace coup, but rather a reasonable evolution of a basically great system. What does anyone think? Dan Hassell cdh1@eds1.eds.com psuvax1!eds1!cdh1
bowen@cs.Buffalo.EDU (Devon E Bowen) (10/18/90)
In article <612@eds1.UUCP>, cdh1@eds1.UUCP (C. Daniel Hassell) writes: > I propose that we solve this by not pestering Andy to amend his elegant > code, but rather develop an enhanced Minix, or perhaps Internet Minix, > that has the features WE want. I've been thinking a lot about this lately, too. I'm considering using Minix in an OS course next semester so I can certainly appreciate the need to keep it clean. But as a user, I'd really like it to be as usable as possible. It seems we would need to keep multiple versions of the OS, though. One for each type of system. Because each system is going to be able to support different things. For example, I've just got an 8088 laptop. I certainly don't want kernel space wasted for features that aren't going to help me on this machine type. I would be willing to coordinate something along these lines for my machine type, though. Devon
evans@syd.dit.CSIRO.AU (Bruce.Evans) (10/23/90)
In article <612@eds1.UUCP> cdh1@eds1.UUCP (C. Daniel Hassell) writes: >I propose that we solve this by not pestering Andy to amend his elegant >code, but rather develop an enhanced Minix, or perhaps Internet Minix, >that has the features WE want. I have been doing something like this for the last 3 years. Andy confused the issue by adopting most of my changes for 1.5. -- Bruce Evans evans@syd.dit.csiro.au
nall@sun8.scri.fsu.edu (John Nall) (10/24/90)
In article <1990Oct23.072105.20694@syd.dit.CSIRO.AU> evans@syd.dit.CSIRO.AU (Bruce.Evans) writes: >In article <612@eds1.UUCP> cdh1@eds1.UUCP (C. Daniel Hassell) writes: >>I propose that we solve this by not pestering Andy to amend his elegant >>code, but rather develop an enhanced Minix, or perhaps Internet Minix, >>that has the features WE want. > >I have been doing something like this for the last 3 years. Andy confused >the issue by adopting most of my changes for 1.5. >-- >Bruce Evans evans@syd.dit.csiro.au I might add that I plan to use Bruce's Minix-386 system to teach my Operating System course, when next I teach it (probably next summer). (By then, perhaps, I'll have Minix-386 working :-< ) While I am one of Andy's most loyal fans, I find that since the textbook doesn't track the code anymore in any event, I'm going to have to do some sort of improvision. And since our PC lab has only 386's...... On another chain of thought, why doesn't someone who is good at organizing use the fact that quite a few people are "using" Bruce's 386 system (that is in quotes because I'm including people like myself who don't have it completely going yet!) to get a SIG going. -- John W. Nall | Supercomputation Computations Research Institute nall@sun8.scri.fsu.edu | Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL 32306 "Real programmers can write assembly code in any language." - Larry Wall
ast@cs.vu.nl (Andy Tanenbaum) (10/25/90)
In article <1251@sun13.scri.fsu.edu> nall@sun8.scri.fsu.edu (John Nall) writes: >While I am one of Andy's most loyal fans, I find that since the textbook >doesn't track the code anymore in any event, I'm going to have to do >some sort of improvision. And since our PC lab has only 386's...... > >On another chain of thought, why doesn't someone who is good at organizing >use the fact that quite a few people are "using" Bruce's 386 system (that >is in quotes because I'm including people like myself who don't have it >completely going yet!) to get a SIG going. PH will continue to stock 1.3 for the benefit of professors who want a version closer to the book. They won't advertise this fact publicly, but their educational sales force will offer it to professors switching to the book (those already using the book probably already have 1.3). To avoid confusion, I'm not against the 386. It's just that right now my interest is in POSIXification. In some ways the 386 is simpler than the 8088. There is an ACK compiler for it, and I may well adopt it eventually. Give it a good testing in the meantime. Andy Tanenbaum (ast@cs.vu.nl)