Andrew S. Tanenbaum: The Impact of MINIX

[@iheartdroid]

Everything aside. I really respect this man. He promotes education and knowledge. Yes, torvalds was influenced by his book before he wrote the linux kernel. He may be biased towards the microkernel but in the end the books he has written are top notch.

[@ijoyner]

He explains why microkernel is better. Lack of this architecture is a severe weakness in Linux.

[@suhijo]

@@ijoyner I don't believe he is biased, I think microkernel architecture has a point against monolithic ones.

[@aashishshrestha1652]

Linus was his student.

[@lawrencedoliveiro9104]

His _Computer Networks_ book is the one I value most. I have the 2nd, 3rd and 4th editions, and they represent a series of snapshots of what was important at various stages of the art over the years. He should probably give up on microkernels by now.

[@nadeemshaikh7863]

@@lawrencedoliveiro9104 What do you say now that Google is openly developing Fuchsia, an operating system based on a microkernel architecture, named Zircon?

[@jlxip]

This is one of the best videos I have ever seen. A huge part of OS history in just 10 minutes. Imagine a world where AT&T bought BSD.

[@GiovanniPanzeri]

Skill, competence and motivation! Only who is talented, is able to destroy any obstruction.

[@khalidelgazzar]

Great interview. Love summarizing the story of operating systems (Unix, minix, Linux, .. ) in around 10 mins!

[@JonathanSteadman2003]

I got all your latest books from Amazon. You are amazing I got the whole collection of the latest edditons. My favourite is the computer network book and Minix book . You are the BEST.

[@ibizenco]

What OS does his brain run on? Impressive to hear him talk. :)

[@gearninja4364]

OS of no OS :)

[@SanjayUVyas]

I remember buying his book, running MINIX off floppies on an IBM PC. oh, why didn't I ask on usenet of someone wanted to build a kernel with me based on MINIX :-D

[@2112SNEEK]

It's never to late.

[@KathleenElliott-vp6gp]

Good to see minix finally getting the recognition it deserves

[@GenoSkill]

THE MAN.

[@asgoritolinasgoritolino7708]

Great interview! What an impressive man Tanenbaum is.

[@carelvanderpoel9953]

Remember how Johan Stevenson (together with Jost) ported Minix to the Atari-ST. The first and only time I saw Johan struggle for days (maybe weeks) with 1 particular problem with the kernel implementation. Of course in the end he solved it.

[@damejelyas]

not all heroes wear capes

[@jamescollier3]

Ehhh. Someone else would have come up with similar shi@

[@CASLOAcademy]

pure computer history! Love ittttttttt all that

[@gackerman99]

this guys books taught me everything I know about computers

[@M3SOTI]

I wonder what his thoughts that intel running his os as a backdoor in intel me. Maybe anyone knows any conference? I can't find any at least in youtube.

[@markteague8889]

BSD might not have sold to AT&T. It was a project; albeit indirectly perhaps, of UC Berkeley and the California Board of Regents. Even then, they might have decided to fight AT&T since BSD had evolved quite separately from AT&T SysVR3 (or whatever version they were up to at that point in time).

[@pravinda333]

I bet he's a great teacher.

[@artisan002]

David Sebastian I figure he has to be comical as hell.

[@spearPYN]

Without Tanenbaum work there would be no Linux.

[@KathleenElliott-vp6gp]

Great job Mr Tannenbaum

[@Nxnn132]

shout out Robert for saving the industry

[@yungabilify]

When the Usenet drama so juicy it has it's own Wikipedia article. Truly the Kendrick vs Drake of computer science

[@web3wizard381]

living legend

[@NSAwatchesME]

Legend & Beast

[@hyperthreaded]

Yeah, so he's rightly bashing AT&T, but the fact is that if he had chosen to put his own creation (Minix) under an OSS license from the beginning, Linux might never have taken off and it might be Minix instead of Linux that would be running all those smartphones and servers today. So he should be bashing himself too, even if just a little bit.

[@ScottThorpe]

Why? He wanted to educate people, not make money.

[@paulgraves1392]

Olaf Klischat Why should he bash himself? MINIX was strictly designed as a teaching tool at a time when the latest UNIX systems could not be used for such purposes. Not placing MINIX under GPL or one of its compatible licenses was a virtue since it allowed the codebase to be kept under control so it could be useful to students. The problem for Tanenbaum was there wasnt an affordable UNIX system at the time. MINIX - being a low cost UNIX-like system attracted a lot of attention for its affordability which meant that people came to it wanting a full UNIX system, and got the ugly end of the stick when they realized that was never the purpose of MINIX, and Tanenbaum rejected a lot of suggestions for the sake of keeping the code simple and able to run on machines his students could afford. He actually refers to this in the Linux is obsolete debate when he says Linux will keep people who who BSD UNIX away from MINIX.

[@onufrybonekip3717]

@@ScottThorpe Why? Because now he wants to make money with Minix. Clearly he made it open source too late and now in his own words "is trying to appeal to a niche market". He made a huge mistake not open sourcing Minix when he had a chance and he will die regretting it.

[@babyboomertwerkteam5662]

@@onufrybonekip3717 meanwhile MINIX runs inside of quite literally every Intel processor made in the last few years :P I don't think he regrets anything.

[@mikafoxx2717]

Minix wasn't nearly as locked down as other systems, as the source code was available for the price of a book. Of course it was way before the open source movement that he was operating in, and he's seen that BSD licences have a lot of good to them, which is why he changed his mind. I do think Linux is bloated, especially for things like smart TV's where you almost certainly don't need floppy disk and 40 different file systems support in the kernel itself. For android phones, sure, but they have gigs of RAM and a half dozen cores.

[@digital_underground]

Wow. If Robert hadn't of heard about interrupt 15, then I'd probably be using FreeBSD. Cool.

The objectives of that project he mentions in the end are the same objectives of Erlang. Maybe there is some synergy there.

[@daniellopesrezer3935]

TANENBAUM. Ele é referencia em redes de computadores.

[@gmaglio]

Wow! Just, wow!

[@r2com641]

Is he running minix on his MacBook? 😃

[@trombektango6604]

hey people is there is a chance to convert monolithic kernel to micro kernel?

[@esra_erimez]

The man is a god.

[@folksurvival]

No, just a member of a tribe that claim to be chosen by their god.

[@17plus9]

True boss.

[@MontyGumby]

why did he not use BSD for teaching instead of writing his own (Minix) ?

[@l0_0l45]

He learnt so much from writing his own OS. Since he put every line of code in it himself, he can teach it the best.

[@josh5457]

BSD was still under the AT&T license at the time Tanenbaum wrote MINIX (1987). "Until then, all versions of BSD incorporated proprietary AT&T Unix code and were, therefore, subject to an AT&T software license. Source code licenses had become very expensive and several outside parties had expressed interest in a separate release of the networking code, which had been developed entirely outside AT&T and would not be subject to the licensing requirement. This led to Networking Release 1 (Net/1), which was made available to non-licensees of AT&T code and was freely redistributable under the terms of the BSD license. It was released in June 1989." en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Berkeley_Software_Distribution#4.3BSD

[@openmarkand]

Because BSD are monolithic kernels.

[@babyboomertwerkteam5662]

There was no freely available BSD until 1992 (386BSD, the basis of all current BSDs today).

[@smorrow]

What was the "something Xerox did"?

[@ximalas]

Xerox mostly ignored graphical interfaces with icons, windows, and mice, even when they had it right in front of them. See Xerox Alto.

[@ijoyner]

The management ignored and gave away what was being done at Xerox PARC. They showed Apple (who were doing similar work, but not so ambitious), and Jobs said "What are you guys doing here, you could rule the world with this technology". Most of the Xerox PARC people left Xerox to go down the road to Apple to actually build products.

[@KathleenElliott-vp6gp]

Great history os

[@johnduffy1488]

Fantastic

[@JonathanSteadman2003]

Love minix. :)

[@mahmoudi_arman]

he is a pattern for all those who like computer

[@nikno6814]

the Excellent Professor I've ever Known

[@michaelkaercher]

Speaking about bean counters: If Tanenbaum would have made his software free, Minix would have taken the world by storm instead of Linux. The software architecture of Minix is superior to that of the early linux distros. At the time I could not comprehend, that he did not put minix under a free license. It was just unbelievable.

[@kovoc1]

Tanenbaum wanted to make MINIX free software, but Prentice-Hall refused to allow it. It isn't fair to say that this was done for his own profit; it was done because the publisher refused to have it any other way.

[@michaelkaercher]

​@@kovoc1 He could have marketed his book without the software and published the software independently. It is normal that book companies protect their IP.

[@kovoc1]

@@michaelkaercher The source code of MINIX is integral to how 'Operating Systems: Design and Implementation' is structured; I have doubts as to if Prentice-Hall would have been willing to allow Tanenbaum to retain his copyright on it. Regardless, the idea of Tanenbaum and VU Amsterdam being able to supply the massive demand that MINIX elicited seems unlikely. I suppose that he could have published MINIX on USENET, but that would not have succeeded in getting MINIX in the hands of everyone who wanted it. I think that Tanenbaum made the right choice--and that this choice was not motivated by profit. His goal was to get MINIX in the hands of as many students as possible, and I think he accomplished that goal in spite of the circumstances.

[@stackoverflow2155]

unfathomably based.

[@kamimaza]

5:16 AT&T had to stay out of other businesses as part of the 1956 agreement so I doubt they could've bought a startup.

[@MatthewSuffidy]

Kind of doubt that no minix= no linux as Linus wants to make and os probably still. But who can tell.

[@PEGuyMadison]

And only a few will remember that Minix was the base for Linux

[@mrnarason]

great books

[@CantaloupeJones]

"I would've invented VMware" except it would've been totally different.

[@goldalexanavay1644]

soyez heureux malheur à Linus Torvalds, good day Adrew Tanenbaum

[@tomservo5007]

Most of us are running MINIX now , we just don't know it.

[@kursatyakupkukul7670]

I understand his thinking but this is not like if this wouldn't be there there wouldn't be that kind of thing. It would just be something else. There's plenty of clever ppl

[@danielkrajnik3817]

5:40

[@daMacadamBlob]

He talks like he has an extremely overclocked brain

[@dasomicron]

amazed

[@vladimirrodionov5391]

I get the feeling that 30 years after flaming Linux Andrew still HATES Linus's guts for stealing "his" glory.

[@markturk5050]

Minix runs on EVERY chip. Has its own port range and NO security. Biggest security threat in the world

[@tubeincompetence]

Hmm.. And if Linus knew about BSD at the time he probably wouldn't have created Linux. A world based on BSD wouldn't be so bad. :)

[@nobytes2]

Nope, BSD was licensed to only some US universities. It wasn't freely available.

[@babyboomertwerkteam5662]

The first open source BSD (386BSD) didn't exist until 1992 - a whole year after Linus already started writing Linux.

[@toddkfisher]

Why didn't this dweeb just install "stub" or "dummy" ISRs for all of the interrupts that he didn't write code for?

[@juliannevillecorrea]

#compute #computing #computer #software #kernel #os #userspace #update #liveupdate Sefra Correa Marielyn Correa Wilson Correa DANIEL D'SOUZA Daniel Dsouza harsh kittur

[@MakkenzyAlex]

Send eick swidt swift key location users

[@Waldemar_la_Tendresse]

It just sounds too good to me to not play a much larger role in the operating system market. If the kernel is also written in Rust, then it should probably be the most stable little technical masterpiece, which unfortunately has played far too small a role so far.

Andrew we have Rust now. Microkernels are now possible. Join the Redox team and give it to Linus where it hurts. Call Richard too.

[@dlekic]

Andrew always makes me laugh with his pointless remarks. If there were no Minix or Linux, there would be some other open-source system around. Most likely the army of Linux programmers would join the GNU/Hurd project, or something similar...

[@paulgraves1392]

Dejan Lekic The problem was that GNU had been in development for about 8 years and Hurd still did not show any signs of materialising (RMS spent three years thinking that Mach could be used and Hurd did not boot until 1994 -by which Linux was starting to become a significant commercial force) and there was the AT&T lawsuit with FreeBSD. Linux happened to be at the right place at the right time and rightfully won where other OS's had failed.

[@jamescollier3]

I agree. Something else would have come up

[@-BILYAKIS-]

He uses Apple

[@Obbliteration]

He talks too fast, terrible at interviews

[@17plus9]

His brain is overclocked.

[@damejelyas]

@@17plus9 he is the man

[@thebristolbruiser]

I can understand him perfectly at 2x speed.

[@dominiclloyd1716]

I find all Android TV box are crap but the MINIX is absolutely tripe drives me insane I swear I shall NEVER EVER buy anything ever again from MINIX your customer care service non existing your not having my money no way .shocking how terrible you function!!!!!!!

[@Joe-ud1de]

No, Android TV and the micro kernel minix are totally different things

[@killianogrady-walshe4213]

Hey man, you might be at the wrong adres to post your comment. I believe you might have the MINIX 3 operating system and the mini computer mixed up. They're both veeeeeery different things :)

[@mahkhi7154]

I Say MINIX, because You P1Gs Understand It to Be Secure. So, I have to Talk your Language for you To Understand. Believe it Or Not, Kesaria Kernel was about Security Not Speed. Intel Makes 3 to 5 GHz CPU's. CPU's are Fast Enough. We Need to Make Security, Was My Idea. ALL, Operating Systems Want to Be Secure. They don't do it at the Cost of Performance. Minix is Just Too Slow. 1000 Times Slower than Other Operating Systems. Just Educational idea. I Wanted To do SECURITY Using Hardware. Security Done using Hardware, Results in Hardware Acceleration. Hardware Acceleration = 7 Times Faster, than Other Operating Systems.