What would you like to see most in minix?

Usenet comp.os.minix ^ | 25 August 2011/1991 | Linus Torvalds

[ShadowAce]

Editors' Note: 20 years ago today, it all began.

"From: torvalds@klaava.Helsinki.FI (Linus Benedict Torvalds)
Newsgroups: comp.os.minix
Subject: What would you like to see most in minix?
Summary: small poll for my new operating system
Message-ID: <1991Aug25.205708.9541@klaava.Helsinki.FI>
Date: 25 Aug 91 20:57:08 GMT
Organization: University of Helsinki

Hello everybody out there using minix - I'm doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won't be big and professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones. This has been brewing since april, and is starting to get ready. I'd like any feedback onthings people like/dislike in minix, as my OS resembles it somewhat (same physical layout of the file-system (due to practical reasons) among other things).

I've currently ported bash(1.08) and gcc(1.40), and things seem to work.

This implies that I'll get something practical within a few months, and I'd like to know what features most people would want. Any suggestions are welcome, but I won't promise I'll implement them :-)
Linus (torvalds@kruuna.helsinki.fi)

PS. Yes - it's free of any minix code, and it has a multi-threaded fs.

It is NOT protable (uses 386 task switching etc), and it probably never will support anything other than AT-harddisks, as that's all I have :-(

[ShadowAce]

Without this e-mail 20 years ago today, FR wouldn't be the site it is.

[ShadowAce]

[martin_fierro]

[ShadowAce]

ping

[CORedneck]

Started playing with Linux in 1995 ! Done Linux with PPC, Sun SPARC, Intel chips. Done Unix since 1988 and started with the Sperry systems and then went over to SCO and funny thing was looking getting SCO for my 486 system but they wanted a lot of $$$$ and the SCO person I talked to suggested Linux ! This was the SCO that was still in Santa Cruz CA and not when they moved to Utah under Darl McBride ad the M$ inspired lawsuit.

ALso done various flavors of BSD like OpenBSD, FreeeBSD, Darwin under Mac as well.

[edh]

This minix will never amount to anything :p.

[fremont_steve]

Lets see - I was working on the design of a VME I/O system for a Sequent derivative Multi-486 system running System V when I saw this post. I had purchased Minix 1.0 and the associated book after Andrew Tannenbaum gave a talk here in Silicon Valley at the TechMart in 1986. I followed comp.os.minix because I dreamed of having a Unix box at home - but as you mentioned - couldn’t afford it. Then this announcement came along and shortly there after I downloaded version 0.12 and followed the instructions. Got it up and running - it was BLINDINGLY fast on a 386. You could run 64Mb processes on it! Minix was limited to 64Kcode/64Kdata even on 386 hardware. It made DOS look like a child’s toy, and Minix didn’t look much better.

It’s been a joy ride ever since ;-)

[DaxtonBrown]

My web server and database run on a Linux box. Never would have been able to afford it otherwise.

[ShadowAce]

I wasn’t quite as early—1993 was my first taste of Linux. Got it up and running on a 386DX, and it was quite fast, as you mentioned.

[CORedneck]

Funny thing about Minix, I barely played with it but I have an old 286 machine that I got in 1988 and it is now loaded with Minix ! I even setup a web server on it as well ! There is a NE1000 card on it. I will need to fire it sometime just for fun !

[ShadowAce]

I know you can set up a VM with it as well, if your hardware has gone bad.

[2 Kool 2 Be 4-Gotten]

Great post. Wonder why www.google.com doesn’t have a graphic to celebrate this?

But then again - is this when Linux was born or conceived :)

[ShadowAce]

Born. It was conceived in the previous April (per post).

Short gestation period. :)

[2 Kool 2 Be 4-Gotten]

Pretty depressing when I compare what I’ve accomplished and written in such a short time to what Linus has. But then again, that’s why he’s Linus :)

[papasmurf]

“Can’t sing. Can’t act. Balding. Can dance a little.”

[hadit2here]

I remember downloading this new Linux O/S onto 5.25” floppies via 14.4 K modem around 1992 and taking it home to “install” on a used 386SX box that I had laying around. I could even run it from the floppy disk!

Had installed and admined an SCO Zenix server in a customer’s office and wanted to see what this new O/S was like, since it was free and Zenix was $$$$. Didn’t even have a modem or internet connection on that box, but had fun learning and seeing how it compared to the Zenix I had installed on the client site. Client was really impressed that they could call me with a problem and I could login via modem (14.4) and admin remotely from the command line or reboot the system if they’d really marfed things up. [ grin ]

Loved Linux and experimented with it over the years. Had a leased virtal server running FreeBSD for a while, which was OK, but then finally moved to the dedicated Red Hat Linux box web server that is still running nicely today.

I bless Linus Torvalds every day that I don’t have to get on a Windoze box. Now running Ubuntu 10.4 and love it every day. Thank, Linus, for your “hobby” operating system!