Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!bloom-beacon!apple!vsi1!wyse!mips!sultra!dtynan
From: dtynan@sultra.UUCP (Der Tynan)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.nsc.32k
Subject: Re: AUTHOR SPEAKS: '532 Manifesto
Summary: Minix?  Full blown? :-) :-)
Keywords: cheap nsc 532
Message-ID: <2668@sultra.UUCP>
Date: 21 Nov 88 23:11:18 GMT
References: <433@sdrc.UUCP> <2659@sultra.UUCP> <7885@nsc.nsc.com> <7718@boring.cwi.nl>
Organization: Tynan Computers, Sunnyvale, CA
Lines: 50

In article <7718@boring.cwi.nl>, jack@cwi.nl (Jack Jansen) writes:
> In article <7885@nsc.nsc.com> rfg@nsc.nsc.com.UUCP (Ron Guilmette) writes:
> 
> Uhm.... Either I'm missing something, or somebody else is.
> - Minix is a complete, full-blown operating system. I would not
>   be surprised if it ran *faster* than either BSD or sysV.
>   The only drawbacks are that it doesn't have the fast filesystem
>   (but neither has sysV) and  that it doesn't have VM (but that makes
>   it faster, and who needs VM anyway:-)

I think you forgot to add all the smileys.  In fact, I find this one of the
funniest postings in a while.  What you should realize, is some of us out
there are actually running Minix.  As for it being complete, and full-blown,
is indeed laughable.  Minix is great if you want to learn about OS's, however,
if you want to do 'real work', forget it.  My system crashes on the average
of twice a day.  Most software off the net won't work with it, unless seriously
modified, and then if it does, it will usually crash the system or die.  I've
been running PD uucp implementations for a while now, and for the most part,
I get a good connection once out of every ten tries.  Also, it *never* has
enough room, and so it bounces mail left, right and centre, when the fork()
fails.  I'm not trying to put down Minix, but don't try and tell us it is
complete.  As for it running faster than BSD or SysV, again this is amusing.
Obviously, you've never tried unsharing something.  This kind of activity
can literally take hours.  Compiles are similar.  The fact that it doesn't
support swapping or paging is a bug, not a feature.  It doesn't even support
shared-text.  As for who needs VM?  Anyone trying to get 'real work' done.
I've had this argument with people around here, for a while now.  One thing
we *do* agree on, is that Minix is not for serious work.  I would suggest,
that rather than going to a '532 system, you stick with the '386, because
judging by your posting, you're looking for a 'faster version of Minix',
not something to do real computing.  BTW;  I'm not typing this from the
Minix machine.  That's why you're seeing this posting :-)

> - XINU, on the other hand, was a toy operating system the last time
>   I looked. Actually, the term 'monitor' was probably better than
>   'operating system'. Fine for teaching classes, not something you
>   would want to do serious work on.
>   (Note however that I've only looked at the old PDP-11 XINU. Ignore
>   this comment if it has substantially improved since then).

> Fight war, not wars			| Jack Jansen, jack@cwi.nl

Perhaps you got Minix and XINU mixed up, here.  This comment belongs with
the above :-)
						- Der
-- 
	dtynan@zorba.Tynan.COM  (Dermot Tynan @ Tynan Computers)
	{apple,mips,pyramid,uunet}!Tynan.COM!dtynan

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