Request to Forum Admin - Can We Please Have a Dedicated Minix Thread

In an effort to promote the development of a very promising new POSIX compliant operating system, I think it would be nice to create a dedicated heading directly under "Other NIX" (along side FREE BSD, rather than just lumping in under Other *NIX forums/Other *NIX).

While, it is certainly true that Minux doesn't have anywhere near the installed base of Linux or even Free BSD (in the case of Linux, not by orders of magnitude), it DOES break new ground in several very important areas where both BSD and Linux have room for improvement.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MINIX_3

Minux development should not be seen as competing with Linux or BSD, but rather in complimenting it by offering an alternative 22nd century POSIX compliant kernel architecture that can deal with the rapidly escalating complexity of modern hardware without becoming unstable bloat-ware.

I have been involved in the Linux community since well before the kernel 0.8 days, and now that Minix3 has been made available freely under a permissive BSD license, I think development has a chance to really take off with a little more support from the community.

So, for all of the above reasons, I think it would be a really good idea to give Minix a dedicated forum heading of it's own (even if there aren't 50 posts a day to justify it at first). Trust me on this one, if MINIX lives up to one tenth it's potential, I would not be surprised to see that, in another ten years, the situation is completely reversed, with monolithic-kernel POSIX OS's in the tiny minority (you heard it here first).

At least let's give it a try, and see how it works out . . .

- Delphin

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...distro-513876/ - even though it refers to Linux distros, this is as applicable now as it ever has been. Also, since Minix is so little used, what purpose would a separate forum here serve?

Originally Posted by XavierP http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...distro-513876/ - even though it refers to Linux distros, this is as applicable now as it ever has been. Also, since Minix is so little used, what purpose would a separate forum here serve?

Thank you for moving this question to a more appropriate location.

Minix does seem to have languished over the last few years, but Andrew Tanenbaum just received a substantial grant only a few months ago to continue his research, and the Minix3 project is looking for volunteer programmers to help continue the work.

http://www.minix3.org/news/

I am sure that your are sophisticated enough to understand that Minix is NOT just another knock-off linux distribution, out of the HUNDREDS that are out there.

Minix not only holds a unique position in regard to the development of Linux (because Doctor Tanenbaum's original Minix was instrumental in inspiring Linus Torvalds to create the first version of the Linux Kernel), but also because it has a unique more robust kernel architecture that incorporates features that have not yet found their way into mainstream Linux.

Andy's spirited debates with Linus about the merits of various kernel architectures have contributed greatly to the community, and I have to confess that, more often than not, I have found myself coming down on Tanenbaums side of the debate, and I think the Jury is still out on this one.

Personally, I think that arguing about a single extra layer of kernel abstraction (which would cause at most a few percent performance hit), is really STUPID in the context of our typical UNIX boiler-plate bloat-ware applications with libraries, calling libraries, calling libraries, calling yet more libraries, ad nauseam (not that Windowz is any better).

Consider a Linux GUI App on the desktop running under GNOME. GNOME CALLS GTK, GTK works through X windows, the Xwindows system uses one of several graphics hardware driver layers, and those layers intern make Linux system calls. If the app needs OpenGL then add another layer.

Moving the video drivers, and file system out of the kernel and up the food chain would indeed move them one layer farther from the lowest level kernel code, but, at the same time, also move them one layer CLOSER to the actual application code that is running them in the systems user space.

I think this could be made to be pretty much of a wash, as far as a performance hit goes.

Now, let's contrast this to the fact that the Linux Kernel NOW includes the functionality to dynamically load and unload drivers, which is also known to cause a hit on performance.

This hit can be quite severe when caching static data to the hard drive is necessary, but this arrangement provides NO ADDITIONAL STABILITY WHATSOEVER (actually quite the opposite).

This performance hit for the Linux Kernel was considered ok, but taking a couple percent performance knock (on kernel calls only, most of which could be made up elsewhere) for the worthy purpose of building a MUCH more stable Kernel was NOT considered worthwhile.

Sorry, I’m just not buying that.

I just installed Ubuntu 8.1 on 3 different hardware platforms, and got stupid FLASHY-FLASHY-FLASHY Scroll-Lock/Cap-Locks Kernel Panic!!! on two of the three (Crashing the kernel every time on entry into X-windows on one system, and intermittently during network access on the other).

In fairness, on the same three systems, Both Fedora and SUSE come up clean, with no kernel panics even in several hours of use, but I suspect that this is only because they don't load the same drivers as Ubuntu.

I’m pretty sure that there will be more pain before I get all the needed drivers working on these boxes, and having a kernel that can stay alive long enough to tell me a little more than ‘FLASHY-FLASHY-FLASHY’ would be nice.

Suffice it to say, that I for one would like to see the “great kernel debate” constructively continue, because I think Tanenbaum’s Minix is on the right track, and their is DEFINITELY room for further development, which will hopefully lead to cross-fertilization improvements that can be branched from Minix into the mainstream Linux Kernel.

I do see your point about not supporting a specific distribution unless those that created it want it that way, and provide support for this forum in turn.

If Andy Tanenbaum (or someone from his team) weighs in on this, would that change your mind?

- Delphin

As a very general comment, decisions about whether or not a particular topic merits its own forum are based on the actual traffic that topic receives, and on whether the topic is sufficiently distinct from the other existing forums. To illustrate, some topics may receive a lot of traffic (eg, 'What distro should I use?') but don't really represent a specific technical subject, while other topics may relate to a specific technical subject, but only receive a minimal number of posts. In either of those scenarios, there would be no real purpose served by establishing a dedicated forum covering that topic.

Should Minix-related posts rise to the point that it would make good logical sense to create a dedicated forum, I have no doubt that one would be created.

To add to J.W.'s post, Minix questions would fit very nicely in the Other *Nix forum for now. If you can get sufficient people to post there and can get a bit of a groundswell going then Jeremy may well start up a sub-forum. You must realise though that Jeremy gets many many calls to create new sub-forums and unless you can show that it will be well trafficked and useful then it's unlikely to be created - no matter how worthy you may believe the project to be. And, finally, as Jeremy once said, the forum is LinuxQuestions.org after all and that will always be the focus.

After reading the history of the interactions between Tannenbaum and Torvalds, I find amusing the concept that Tannenbaum would join this forum. But then, is Linus a member?

Having investigated and downloaded (but not installed due to lack of hardware support) minix3 some months ago, I find it hard to believe it will have more than a minor following here.
I would also have thought that "Other *Nix" was suitably appropriate for it.

If Andy Tannenbaum wrote to Jeremy to request a sub-forum and he (and/or the dev team) would participate on the forums and answer questions then, yes, a sub-forum would be created.

Originally Posted by XavierP If Andy Tannenbaum wrote to Jeremy to request a sub-forum and he (and/or the dev team) would participate on the forums and answer questions then, yes, a sub-forum would be created.

Thank you Xavier, I am not sure if they have the resources, but if not, you have been more than fair.

I hope the Minix team will elect to participate, because this forum has one of the broadest reaches of any Linux forums on the net, from outright beginners to the most experienced users, and we can all learn a lot by the kinds of questions and comments posted here.

On a side note, after years of opposing the Minix micro-kernel approach of running drivers and services in user-space instead of in the kernel, Linus has had a change of heart and approved the inclusion of a user space driver API as of linux kernel 2.6.23

http://www.linux-magazine.com/issues...6/driver_shift

Sadly, the Linux implementation is seriously flawed from a security perspective, because it still requires a part of the driver to be loaded into the privileged processor ring-zero kernel code, so I guess we could all still learn a thing or two from Minix.

Still, this is a step in the right direction, because the code segment in the kernel will be much smaller and easier to audit, and [hopefully] more stable. This is important because keeping Linux stable and secure on the desktop is actually a much GREATER challenge than it is in a server environment where you have more control.

Overall, I [and a lot of other people] think this change to a stable driver API in Linux, with drivers running [at least mostly] in userspace, is one of the positive changes that came out of the Torvalds-Tanenbaum discussions in the past.

If the Minix team will join this forum, I am sure that they will make other significant contributions in the future.

- Delphin