gng@spocom.UUCP (10/12/89)
Hello. I'm considering purchasing Minix as a serious multitasking/multiuser,
all-purpose hacking (...etc), OS. Yet, I have a few questions first:
1) What is the latest version of Minix and what features does it have?
How compatible is it with other versions of unix? (SysV/BSD 4.3)
How easy/difficult is it to port C source code/shell script code to
Minix from those operating systems and shells? (After all, I'm just an
amateur at C and shell scripts, so I need all the compatibility I can get!)
2) Is UUCP/Netnews software available for Minix?
3) On the Atari ST (I should mention that all questions are referring to the
ST versions of Minix), is it possible to allow multiuser capabilities -
ie., allow another user to log in through the serial port and a user to
log in on the console? How about supporting multiple users using a
multiport controller along with the appropriate device drivers?
4) Is ST-Minix capable of killing off tasks/processes that have gone crazy?
so this wouldn't affect other running tasks...(like a Sun 386i or VM/386)
5) Currently, I use MT C-Shell (Beckemeyer Development Tools, Oakland, CA)
and it's an ok multi-tasking/user system, but if Minix can offer me more,
then I'd be willing to consider it as a serious alternative. Has anyone
ever used mt c-shell and compared it to minix? (or other OS' like OS/9?)
Thank you for any help.
--
George Ng (Computer Science, Univ. of Toronto) "Sure I would like Canadian
UUCP: uunet!mnetor!{becker,hybrid}!spocom!gng winters too...if it weren't
or: uunet!attcan!telly!ziebmef!spocom!gng for the weather."