jnall%FSU.BITNET@cornellc.cit.cornell.edu (John Nall 904-644-5241) (06/08/89)
Since everyone (ok, a lot of people) have conceded that the KISS version of Minix is desirable as a teaching tool, and the real problem is that there are people who want to also use it as a production system (actually, I suspect that these are mostly people who in fact have daily access to large production systems and just want a personal system with source to provide therapy for job-related stress), let me add something from the perspective of the teacher. For undergraduate operating systems courses (normally called Introduction to Operating Systems, or something similar), Minix 1.3 is desirable. It is small enough for a person to understand the whole thing, it works on a PC with a floppy, and illustrates the key points of the theory quite well. However...there is life beyond the undergraduate level. At the graduate level, students start having access to better lab equipment (we keep the undergraduates off the good stuff!). They also tend to have better equipment at home (graduate students are notoriously wealthy!). So I could definitely see a place for an advanced version of Minix as a teaching tool for Advanced Operating Systems courses. In fact, taking the undergraduate course, and then taking the advanced course would provide a good perspective of how an operating system evolves. And the source would be available! So...the bottom line is that from the Prentice-Hall view, they should be willing to support the idea of an advanced version IF there were a corresponding text. Perhaps some of the more vocal advocates of the advanced system should collaborate with ast.... John Nall Computer Science Department Florida State University Tallahassee, FL 32316 (jnall@rai.fsu.edu Bitnet) (nall@nu.cs.fsu.edu Arpa/Internet)