Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!ria!uwovax!7103_2622
From: 7103_2622@uwovax.uwo.ca (Eric Smith)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Announcing a new multitasking system for the ST
Message-ID: <7026.26f67178@uwovax.uwo.ca>
Date: 18 Sep 90 23:11:52 GMT
Lines: 72

I've just sent the sources and binaries of MiNT version 0.6 to
comp.{sources,binaries}.atari.st. MiNT is not TOS, but it's a
multitasking extension for TOS. It provides a number of facilities
that are limited or lacking in other multitasking environments for
the ST, including:

  -- pipes, named fifo's, and pseudo-ttys
  -- signals, including kill(), signal(), sigsetmask(), and sigblock()
     system calls
  -- process groups and job control
  -- resource limits
  -- process priorities
  -- fork() and vfork() system calls
  -- new devices: midi, null, mouse (Sun-compatible), tty, and fd0-fd2
     (for accessing stdin, stdout, and stderr through the filesystem);
     these, and the normal con, aux, and prn devices are accessible
     through files on a fake drive V:
  -- processes are available through drive X:; deleting a process
     kills it, and they may be renamed just like TOS files
  -- all system calls are accessible through the GEMDOS, BIOS, and XBIOS
     traps, so it should be easy to write MiNT programs with any existing
     ST compiler
  -- supports the TOS 1.4 "fastload" bit, CTRL-ALT-DEL for rebooting,
     and fixes some TOS bugs (including the infamous I/O redirection
     bug)

MiNT can run GEM programs, but no more than 1 at a time (you can have
a GEM program and several "plain" TOS programs running simultaneously).
You can run MiNT as an AUTO folder application, or stand-alone. This
is a problem with GEM, not MiNT; other window managers don't have
this problem (e.g. the MGR window system runs under MiNT, and it should
be quite feasible to port an X server and clients to MiNT).

Comparisons with MicroRTX, and Minix are, I suppose, inevitable; but
they're probably not helpful. Minix is a whole new operating system,
based on Unix V7, and not at all TOS compatible. It's quite nice, but
I find that I've spent a lot of effort to get a nice TOS environment,
and I don't want to have to re-invent the wheel with Minix. Moreover,
with MiNT one gets some nice features from BSD Unix (like job control,
safe signals, and pseudo-ttys) that Minix is lacking.

MicroRTX is TOS compatible, but I see it as being aimed at a different
group of users. MiNT is not real time, and is not a supported commercial
product, so obviously there are some people who will find it inferior
to MicroRTX for these reasons. On the other hand, MiNT is more like
Unix, which should make it much easier to port programs to it.
MicroRTX lacks most of the features listed above; on the other hand,
MiNT lacks a number of features of RTX (such as the real-time extensions,
and message queues). If you're an experienced programmer and you like Unix,
you'll probably like MiNT. If you don't like Unix, you may prefer MicroRTX.
If you don't program, you should use whatever best supports the programs you
like. I think the two systems can co-exist. (They even share a (very few)
system calls).

Also, MiNT is freeware, *not* a commercial product or shareware; and it
comes with all the source code. I would encourage people to tinker
with it, improve it, and fix bugs. My hope is that MiNT can become a
reliable alternative to TOS for people who want a more Unix like
environment.
--
Eric R. Smith                     email:
Dept. of Mathematics            ersmith@uwovax.uwo.ca
University of Western Ontario   ersmith@uwovax.bitnet
London, Ont. Canada N6A 5B7
ph: (519) 661-3638
-- 
--
Eric R. Smith                     email:
Dept. of Mathematics            ersmith@uwovax.uwo.ca
University of Western Ontario   ersmith@uwovax.bitnet
London, Ont. Canada N6A 5B7
ph: (519) 661-3638