Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uwm.edu!cs.utexas.edu!knapp
From: knapp@cs.utexas.edu (Edgar Knapp)
Newsgroups: comp.os.minix
Subject: Re: Whatever happened to Mac/Minix
Keywords: Macintosh, Minix
Message-ID: <7550@cs.utexas.edu>
Date: 11 Jan 90 04:35:49 GMT
References: <2931@murtoa.cs.mu.oz.au>
Organization: U. Texas CS Dept., Austin, Texas
Lines: 46

In article <2931@murtoa.cs.mu.oz.au> rob@cs.mu.oz.au (Robert Wallen) writes:
[Question about existence of MacMINIX deleted]

Joe Pickert of ArcheType, Inc. implemented MacMINIX, the Mac version
of MINIX. It is in beta test right now, and as I am one of the
reviewers I have a few comments. I am, however, not an expert on
MINIX, but know a little about Macs and UNIX.

The version I am looking at is a rough port of MINIX 1.3. It bears the
strong flavor (or should I say odor) of MeSsDOS and the PC, the
integration into the Mac system and interface leaves much to be
desired.

What disturbed me most were the following:

 - mined may be great on a PC, but without mouse support on the Mac it
   feels utterly preposterous. Also there is no keyboard support for
   scrolling, copying, and pasting. Being used to gnu-emacs, mined just
   doesn't cut it. And the size restrictions Andy claims are the reason
   behind mined don't apply to Macs in the first place.

 - the link to the Mac file system is rudimentary. One has to manually
   import and export single files, and then copy from and to /dev/efs
   to introduce them to MINIX. Why not automatically mount the Mac
   file system on /mac, say?

 - so far there is no printing support short of manually exporting a
   text file to the Mac file system and printing it from there.

 - in case of crashes you even lose _SAVED_ MINIX workfiles, changes to
   passwords, etc. I find this absolutely intolerable, but I don't
   know whether this MINIX's fault or the Mac implementation's (does
   the RAM disk have anything to do with that?).

 - I haven't been able to test the C compiler because I was unable to
   run it (what does an asterisk behind a file name mean, anyway?).

 - Since I absolutely hate *roff, what am I going to do about MINIX
   and text processing?

In short, I think MacMINIX in its current state may be a neat toy for
students of Operating Systems classes, but not much more (am I missing
the point here?).

Edgar

(knapp@cs.utexas.edu)