ast@cs.vu.nl (Andy Tanenbaum) (03/18/91)
Archive-name: os/research/amoeba/1991-03-15 Archive-directory: ftp.cs.vu.nl:/pub/amoeba/ [192.31.231.42] Original-posting-by: ast@cs.vu.nl (Andy Tanenbaum) Original-subject: Re: Amoeba Availability for Minix? Reposted-by: emv@msen.com (Edward Vielmetti, MSEN) In article <1991Mar14.133523.45833@vaxb.acs.unt.edu> kenc@vaxb.acs.unt.edu writes: >What's this rumor that Amoeba is being ported? I've references to it twice >today, and it's got me REAL curious. > I thought that Amoeba was a generic distributed processing-type environment. Amoeba is a standalone distributed operating system. It does not work with, under, over, or in any way with other operating systems. It is designed at making a collection of, say, 50 high-end workstations, each with at least 4M, and one of which has at least 16M, into a single transparent system. It is the opposite end of the spectrum from MINIX. There is no way Amoeba will ever run on anything tiny, like a single 4M Atari. A minimum useful configuration would be 5 Sun-3s, four of which have 4M and one of which has 16M. A 200M disk would be nice. For more about Amoeba, ftp to ftp.cs.vu.nl and look in pub/amoeba. There is a READ_ME file there that describes about 1000 pages of material on Amoeba that is located there for FTPing. A first beta tape of Amoeba will be available real soon now. Amoeba is copyrighted software, like MINIX, but will be available to universities for a modest fee, probably 500 ECU (about $700). It is not expected that private individuals will have the necessary equipment to run it. Amoeba will be available under commercial terms to companies, including complete support (for a fee, of course). We are working closely with a Dutch software company, ACE, which has 15 years experience in the UNIX business. Andy Tanenbaum (ast@cs.vu.nl)