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From: fdr@apollo.uucp (Franklin Reynolds)
Newsgroups: comp.arch,comp.unix.wizards,comp.os.misc
Subject: Re: Free Software Foundation (was: Re: Mach, the new standard?)
Message-ID: <37461f69.ccb2@apollo.uucp>
Date: Mon, 14-Sep-87 11:02:00 EDT
Article-I.D.: apollo.37461f69.ccb2
Posted: Mon Sep 14 11:02:00 1987
Date-Received: Tue, 15-Sep-87 03:19:42 EDT
References: <1665@ncr-sd.SanDiego.NCR.COM> <8381@utzoo.UUCP> <797@Pescadero.ARPA> <3728a4c0.ccb2@apollo.uucp> <692@sugar.UUCP>
Reply-To: fdr@apollo.UUCP (Franklin Reynolds)
Organization: Apollo Computer, Chelmsford, MA
Lines: 36
Xref: mnetor comp.arch:2170 comp.unix.wizards:4233 comp.os.misc:171

In article <692@sugar.UUCP> peter@sugar.UUCP (Peter da Silva) writes:
>
>> MINIX is a decent, small system for teaching. GNU is supposed
>> to be suitable for research or commercial development.
>
>Are you implying that Version 7 wasn't suitable for research or commercial
>development? 

Are you impying that MINIX is suitable for research or commercial
development? 

All I implied was that MINIX was not suitable for research or commercial
development. MINIX is similar, but not equal, to Version 7. Some of the
features that are lacking are very important. On the other hand, 
Version 7 is pretty old and lacks some things that are important to *me*.
>
>MINIX probably needs a better message passing mechanism, to avoid some of
>the delays, and a bit of disk I/O optimisation. Otherwise it's quite a
>usable system if you don't have anything better. Personally I prefer
>AmigaDOS, but it's not designed to go anywhere... and MINIX is.
>
>I will venture to predict that by the time GNU is out MINIX will be big
>enough to satisfy you.

It is not clear to me that MINIX needs much in the way of extentions. I
think it is welled suited to the task it was designed for, i.e., teaching. 
However, I want a system with virtual memory (large address space), 
demand paging, distributed file system, communications and database 
support. I suspect, though I can't prove, that these facilities are 
important to an awful lot of researchers and commercial developers. If 
MINIX is extended along these lines then I will check it out again, 
otherwise, I will wait for GNU.

Franklin Reynolds
Apollo Computer
mit-eddie!apollo!fdr