Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!wuarchive!udel!mmdf
From: SQ79%liverpool.ac.uk@nsfnet-relay.ac.uk (Mark Powell)
Newsgroups: comp.os.minix
Subject: Official ST upgrade? (no chance...)
Message-ID: <23780@louie.udel.EDU>
Date: 12 Sep 89 18:44:09 GMT
Sender: mmdf@udel.EDU
Lines: 33


   We ST Minix users have been left out in the cold, as far as upgrades. The
PC has 1.1, 1.2, 1.3 & 1.4a, with talk of 1.4b and 2.0, but where is the
ST update. We all know the advantages of having everyone working from the same
version, so where's the official ST upgrade? The alltar kernel, compiled by
Howard Johnson, seems to be the unofficial standard, but there must be alot
of people out there still running 1.1. I've added most of PC1.4 libraries,
commands etc. to my alltar minix and am now running a pretty nice version,
but I'd like to see an upgrade. HCJ's alltar has a nice HAVE feature which
would be nice in an official upgrade, but I suppose that AST wouldn't like
that much (people running assembly language copy68k's etc.)
   There has been talk in the past about the future of Minix and the two
directions people seem to be taking it into; teaching OS and hacking OS, but
I don't want to start the "Future of Minix" messages up again any more than
I would want to start the "yes(1)" messages again (although I think the latter
were more interesting.) Anyway,
from what I can gather people who run minix at home on their own micros
tend to use minix for learning about OS's in general, but don't mind the
odd hack to speed the kernel up etc. (well I know I don't.) Whereas people
using minix at Uni. etc. use it purely (in a general sense) for learning
about OS's. It'd be interesting to find out how many people do use minix for
what purists would call "hacking", but I suppose USENET is made up of mainly
hackers anyway (slander!) so we'd get 99.9% hackers 0.1% "serious use."
   Anyway, I diversify... I can't remember what I was going on about now.
Oh yeah, someone get something out for the ST, please.
   Also, could someone with the POSIX standards post a summary to the net.
(if it's legal) as this much rumored beast seems to have been little dicussed
in detail.

Mark Powell

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