william@syacus.acus.oz (William Mason) (10/08/90)
ast@cs.vu.nl (Andy Tanenbaum) writes: >In article <963@sun13.scri.fsu.edu> nall@sun8.scri.fsu.edu.UUCP (John Nall) writes: >> The present situation with regard to the general availability of >>Amoeba seems to be murky (to me, anyway). I seem to recall that Andy >We have three full-time programmers and various helpers working as hard >as they can putting the Amoeba distribution together. As soon as it is far >enough, I'll announce something. We are definitely making progress. I >hate to give dates when I'm not really sure. We're talking months, not >years, though. Can some kind soul enlighten the endarkened ? Is "Amoeba" an alternative to MINIX ? What are the points of difference ? If ... I'm considering getting into MINIX would I be well advised to wait ? Thanks, William Mason.
ast@cs.vu.nl (Andy Tanenbaum) (10/09/90)
In article <1106@syacus.acus.oz> william@syacus.acus.oz (William Mason) writes: >Can some kind soul enlighten the endarkened ? Is "Amoeba" an alternative >to MINIX ? What are the points of difference ? Amoeba is a distributed system. Minimum recommended configuration is 3 Suns, one of which needs 16M of memory and a 300M disk. Better yet is 30 Suns. In this respect, MINIX and Amoeba are somewhat different. A typical Amoeba application is transmitting real time video over a LAN. It is intended as a more industrial-strength system for heavy users. Andy Tanenbaum (ast@cs.vu.nl)
siebren@cwi.nl (Siebren v.d. Zee) (10/09/90)
william@syacus.acus.oz (William Mason) writes: >Can some kind soul enlighten the endarkened ? Is "Amoeba" an alternative >to MINIX ? What are the points of difference ? If ... I'm considering >getting into MINIX would I be well advised to wait ? Well, it is not an alternative, because it runs on a different class of machines. You'll need a network interface (like an Ethernet card), and at least 4 Megs of main memory. The points of difference are to numerous to list fully. Amoeba is a distributed operation system, as opposed to centralised operating systems such as Unix. Also, it relies on capabilities for protection instead of using some sort of access control lists, like Unix does. Put shortly, you'll need at least a couple of Sun 3's to enjoy the full power of Amoeba. It it interesting to note the way Amoeba and Minix borrowed from each other, by the way. Minix has the same communication protocol (called "amoeba" as well, for maximum confusion :-), so one can talk to Amoeba machines (e.g, Amoeba file servers, Amoeba directory servers) from a Minix machine. On the other hand, Amoeba has a unix emulation package, and all the Minix utilities run on Amoeba using this package. Only the utilities that need to have intimate knowledge about Amoeba (such as backup tools, debuggers) had to be redone. Siebren van der Zee, Amoeba project, CWI Amsterdam. siebren@cwi.nl (Don't use this address after Oct 1990, I'll have a different job and e-mail address by then)