Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!mcsun!ukc!strath-cs!cs.glasgow.ac.uk!bru-cc!eesrajm
From: eesrajm@cc.brunel.ac.uk (Andrew J Michael)
Newsgroups: comp.os.minix
Subject: A real operating system ?
Keywords: future 1.5
Message-ID: <1383@Terra.cc.brunel.ac.uk>
Date: 28 Feb 90 20:19:59 GMT
Organization: Brunel University, Uxbridge, UK
Lines: 34

Several people have recently commented that MINIX is a teaching operating
system, not a real one.

So what makes a real O/S ?  Is it the O/S itself, or the utilities which
come with it ?  Surely no-one in their right minds would buy MSDOS as an
operating system; they buy it for the programs they can run on it.  The same
argument can be applied to MINIX; it is seen as a teaching O/S because the
programs which it runs are pretty restricted in their outlook.  All that MINIX
needs to become a real O/S is application programs.

I must also suggest (and I don't want to start a flame war) that one's view
of MINIX may be tempered by which machine you are running it on.  I have tried
both MINIX-PC and MINIX-ST, and I regard the ST as superior because porting
public-domain UNIX programs to it is pretty simple.  No restrictions on length
of variables or memory usage.  The only real problem is 16-bit ints, but gcc
removes this restriction.

When I did my part-time MSc recently, virtually all the project work was done 
on a MINIX machine at home (admittedly my 68020, not an ST).  MINIX supported
enough of ACK to develop a backend for the Acorn ARM with very little trouble.
MINIX kept my project diary, it sent my mail and did lots of other jobs.
Finally, running TeX, it produced my dissertation and printed it.  That sounds
like a pretty real operating system to me.

Andy Michael



-- 
Andy Michael (eesrajm@cc.brunel.ac.uk)      " Software cannot be written to
85 Hawthorne Crescent                        be completely free of errors."
West Drayton
Middlesex                                    - Acorn Computers Ltd.
UB7 9PA