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From: UH2@psuvm.psu.edu (Lee Sailer)
Newsgroups: comp.os.minix,comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: New MINIX available (UNIX clone with full source code)
Message-ID: <90257.232245UH2@psuvm.psu.edu>
Date: 15 Sep 90 03:22:45 GMT
References: <7485@star.cs.vu.nl>
 <1990Sep11.073655.6259@monu6.cc.monash.edu.au> <7559@star.cs.vu.nl>
Organization: Penn State University
Lines: 15

It occurs to me that the subject line of this thread is somewhat misleading.
Minix is not really a "UNIX clone" in the sense that a COMPAQ is an
IBM clone, for example.  Minix 1.x was originally created more as a
teaching tool than anything else, does not offer many of the features of
a modern UNIX, and lacks many of the utilities.  After all, it will run
on a plain vanilla IBM PC (8088, 2 floppies, 640K).  The source is there
so that students and experimenters can develop better algorithms for
scheduling, swapping, and so on.  Tanenbaum even says somewhere in the
book that Minix is written to be clear rather than fast.

No doubt Minix 2.0 is much improved, but I still doubt it is a "clone"
to the degree that Mach is.  Or Coherent, or whatever (what was it?
Wendin dos?)

            lee