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Operating Systems Software Unix

Minix from Scratch Project Established 229

Posted by timothy from the but-that's-unpossible dept.
decuser writes "The MFS - Minix from Scratch project was established in the wake of the Brown-Tannenbaum controversy. MFS aims to be to the Minix community what LFS is to the Linux community, a recipe for building an alternative OS from 'scratch.'" See the project's website at mfs.sunsite.dk or minixfromscratch.org.
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Minix from Scratch Project Established More

Minix from Scratch Project Established

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  • Horray! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Billly Gates ( 198444 ) on Tuesday June 22, 2004 @07:22PM (#9501134) Journal
    All six of us are happy. :-)

  • huh? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by crayz ( 1056 ) on Tuesday June 22, 2004 @07:22PM (#9501141) Homepage
    Wasn't Minix already built as much "from scratch" as Linux was?

  • Uhh OK... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Tony Hoyle ( 11698 ) <tmh@nodomain.org> on Tuesday June 22, 2004 @07:24PM (#9501157) Homepage
    Minix is great for teaching about OS's - I cut my teeth on it running on an Atari ST, but a proper distro? There's something missing here... oh yes, the point..

    • Agree. Better places to put in effort (Score:5, Insightful)

      by EmbeddedJanitor ( 597831 ) on Tuesday June 22, 2004 @07:48PM (#9501369)
      How about contributing to GNU/Hurd instead? At least Hurd intends to oneday be a real OS and has a microkernel architecture.

      I guess though it is also worth noting that while Minix was only designed for teaching OS concepts it has been used for RealWork. The same happened to Pascal. Nobody was ever supposed to write any RealCode in Pascal - it was also intended only as a teaching tool.

      • Re:Agree. Better places to put in effort (Score:5, Funny)

        by EvilAlien ( 133134 ) on Tuesday June 22, 2004 @08:31PM (#9501697) Journal
        Do you seriously think Hurd will ever actually achieve "real OS" status? The project started in bloody 1990 after 7 years of RMS flailing around [binarycompass.org] in his attempts to build a free OS.

        I expect Microsoft to move towards a BSD-ish source license and that I will be playing Duke Nukem Forever on the Phantom console or Linux before Hurd becomes a real OS ;)

        • Getting Hurd working (Score:5, Interesting)

          by EmbeddedJanitor ( 597831 ) on Tuesday June 22, 2004 @09:18PM (#9502094)
          One of the biggest issues with Hurd does not seem to be the basic OS architecture, but rather the lack of support for various file systems, devices, PPP etc.

          This could potentially be rectified by building a "File System Manager" and "Device Manager" that support the Linux device and file system models. Then, all Linux device drivers and file systems etc could be plugged into Hurd and used with little/no modification.

          The benefit of an exercise like this is that it would push Hurd into "useful" space so that it would become worth putting effort into, and there would then be a microkernel OS with a rich set of code.

          For all Linus' comments about "computer science masturbation", there is still a place for microkernels and they can be pretty damn efficient. Having a solid microkernel OS in OpenSource land is of significant value.

          • One of the biggest issues with Hurd does not seem to be the basic OS architecture, but rather the lack of support for various file systems, devices, PPP etc.

            Umm, so, in other words, Hurd has some stuff from CS textbooks, but nothing very practical. Man, it's a wonder no one uses it!

            • Re:Getting Hurd working (Score:5, Informative)

              by EmbeddedJanitor ( 597831 ) on Tuesday June 22, 2004 @11:52PM (#9503087)
              QNX is a micro-kernel OS. I promise you it is very practical. Microkernels have certain benefits over monolythics. A lot of the cool stuff in Linux didn't get there because of what Linus did, but because someone "scratched an itch". If more people start "scratching their itch" while using Hurd, it will make advances. If you pulled the drivers out of Linux there would just be some boring CS stuff too.

              The biggest problem with drivers etc is that nobody wants to duplicate work for many OSs. Having a "Linux driver comapatability environment" could make Hurd a viable place for experimenters to play in.

              • Hey man, preaching to the choir. I didn't say that Hurd was inherently flawed by the microkernel, just saying that what Hurd has isn't useful to us right now, and what it lacks makes a big dent in its usefulness.
          • Yes, but will we have to call it Linux/Hurd? Or GNU/Linux/Hurd? GNU/Hurd? Hurd of GNU(/Linux optional)? Just plain ol' Hurd? The One True Operating System? For this reason alone, I think this idea should be approached with trepidation.

            On the plus side, if this should ever happen, we'll be able to power the world on the flame wars.
        • i think you're right. Hurd was started because of the desire for a free vaguely unix-like OS. linux took care of that. Hurd's architecture was modeled after Plan 9 (except not as good), because Plan 9 wasn't free or open. that's taken care of, too. i'm surprised at how much attention Hurd still gets. just go work on the real things [bell-labs.com].

      • Re:Agree. Better places to put in effort (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward
        I recently tried Hurd with some high hopes. Debian has a bootable mini-iso that helps in installation. Debian boot kernel didn't have a driver for my plain vanilla NCR/Symbios SCSI controller. Ok, so I did a manual install instead. Hurd DID recognize my controller. But lo! No PPP in Hurd. For a country boy like me, that is a killer. No cable, no DSL in my neck of the woods. One time there *was* PPP in hurd but the arogant maintainers declared "nobody used it" so they removed it.

        Did run Hurd for a few days

      • No I think this is worth while.
        Minix is a diffrent operating system with a diffrent focus. I can easly see Minix being used more effectively in the imbeded market where Linux is today.

        Also I doupt the people who will be pulled into Minix from scratch would otherwise go to Hurd.

        Also (correct me if I'm wrong)[1] but isn't Hurd incomplete? Making a Hurd from scratch might be a bit difficult at this stage.

        [1] I know you will but it just feels better to say it. You know. To make it so people think twice befor

        • Minix is a diffrent operating system with a diffrent focus. I can easly see Minix being used more effectively in the imbeded market where Linux is today.

          Another interesting idea might be to port the Hurd to run on the Minix microkernel. Admittedly it might not be as sexy as L4Ka or as crufty as gnumach, but it would probably be really easy to do compared to resuscitating gnumach yet again or starting with essentially nothing like with L4.

          Minix already has a microkernel with some hardware drivers and the g

  • I always wanted to get Minix .. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by WarlockD ( 623872 ) on Tuesday June 22, 2004 @07:25PM (#9501168)
    The problem was that it cost money :P I always wanted to mess around the code on a simple, yet an operating system you could DO something with. Don't say "Linux!". Have you SEEN how many lines of code that is? I just a lowly hobbyist.

    • Re:I always wanted to get Minix .. (Score:5, Informative)

      by Richard_L_James ( 714854 ) on Tuesday June 22, 2004 @07:34PM (#9501254)
      I always wanted to mess around the code on a simple, yet an operating system you could DO something with.

      Have you looked at FreeDOS [freedos.org]? Under the hood DOS is simple, heavily documented, reliable and capable of doing many tasks, it can also be very well secured with the right tools or modifications. For example many people forget that COMMAND.COM can be replaced with other programs and there are many tools around designed to block actions or commands from being executed (hint for security look at BBS SYSOP security tools that many people like myself used to write).

      • But really ... (Score:5, Interesting)

        by gstoddart ( 321705 ) on Tuesday June 22, 2004 @10:22PM (#9502538) Homepage
        When I left Microsoft it wasn't pre-emptive or very useful. WTF would I want to look at the code, or play with DOS for?

        In my operating systems class I was learning how to implement stuff that Windows wouldn't have for another three years (yes, I implemented pre-emptive multi-tasking in '92 on x86 hardware, and it wasn't bloody well rocket science).

        Hell, I was reading Tanenbaum for my Operating Systems course. I used his definitions for a bunch of system calls to implement a UNIX layer in another OS. (Uh oh, now SCO will sue me and my professor. =)

        Quite frankly I think implementing Minix from scratch is a hell of a lot more interesting than anything DOS ever did. [ And I have the course notes to prove it ;-]

        Now, don't get me wrong, BBS Sysop has street cred in my book, but DOS isn't exactly what I'd call a sophisticated system to want to play with that much as compared to a real multi-tasking OS, which Minix most definitely was.

        • Re:But really ... (Score:4, Interesting)

          by Richard_L_James ( 714854 ) on Wednesday June 23, 2004 @04:40AM (#9504594)
          I implemented pre-emptive multi-tasking in '92 on x86 hardware, and it wasn't bloody well rocket science

          maybe not rocket science, but still impressive as many people at the time were only aware of pre-emptive multi-tasking on the Amiga.

          Quite frankly I think implementing Minix from scratch is a hell of a lot more interesting than anything DOS ever did.

          True. (Dirty)DOS of course being originally based on CPM which in turn was based on Unix!

          However what I and it appears many others like about DOS is the fact it is just so simple, it really is nothing fancy, nothing clever, it just works. Note how active the FreeDOS [freedos.org] homepage is. The simplicity of early DOS versions has also allowed them to be supported on a wide range of hardware including non x86 hardware. It still turns up in the most unlikely of places for single dedicated tasks. There are now many other OS's that are used for embedded tasks but the fact that DOS is still implemented for such tasks says a lot.

          For a personal project I recently decided to run it under DOS for reliability and simplicity, security. Security??!?!?!! Yes, DOS programs run as root but with the right admin you can lock a DOS sytem down to the point where it is virtually impossible to hack. When I look at Linux it has become complicated by features, to the point that keeping it simple or securely looking it down is getting more and more difficult. Note: I use Linux and have played with numerous simplified Linux distros, the problem is so many distros come with too many features installed and services enabled. I like DOS for those tasks where you want nothing more than a well known supported file system, a simple bit of networking (inc. IP) and just your app.

          Still I have also played with Minix and am personally interested in seeing it evolve more. However like someone else said "what's the point", from a techi point I am very much with the "because crowd" however on the practical side I think if this project had started up several years ago it would be more active. I really wish this new Minix project well however currently I fail to see the demand. Still early days....

          • CP/M was based on Unix??? What part? It had a command line and could write to a disk file????
            Please CP/M was or is nothing like Unix. Not even the commands Dir instead of ls, pip instead of cp. Even when they added a directory structure to CP/M it was not a tree structure. CP/M and Unix where miles apart. Now Microsoft sort of slapped some Unix like stuff on to MS-DOS in version 2. That is when you got subdirectories, the cd command and the pipe command.
            The first stable version with all that was 2.11 but at
            • Actually, the current IS OS/2. Microsoft was in charge of development on OS/2 2.0, and instead developed NT (from all that old OS/2 1.x stuff), and told IBM to f*ck off.
              • Yes I know NT was supposed to be the multi-platform version of OS/2. Microsoft dumped the OS/2 APIs and tacked on the windows APIs and the POSIX API. I have to admit I have not seen much in the way of documentation about POSIX under NT and I think Microsoft pulled it from 2000 or XP but I am not sure.
                Did you know that Microsoft developed NT on MIPS boxes right up to Windows 2000? They wanted to make sure that it did not become Intel centric. Guess what? It is now and Intel/AMD only OS :(
        • In my operating systems class I was learning how to implement stuff that Windows wouldn't have for another three years (yes, I implemented pre-emptive multi-tasking in '92 on x86 hardware, and it wasn't bloody well rocket science).

          Heartsurgery is easy: All you need is a blunt knife. Doing something useful like saving someones life by laying a bypass is not.

          Implementing preemptive Multitasking is easy. All you need is a loudmouthed CS student. Doing something useful with it like making a formerly cooperati
      • ...there's an array of Microwave dishes in london operated by (IIRC) the BBC. The software that controls them is running on DOS (don't know the version). Now, the funny thing about this is that the microwave dishes are normally pointing just a few feet above a London Underground line and if the software went completely tits up you'd have a few cooked passengers and one train in need of replacement.

        Always found that story amusing for some reason ;o)

    • Re:I always wanted to get Minix .. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by IrresponsibleUseOfFr ( 779706 ) on Tuesday June 22, 2004 @08:03PM (#9501487) Homepage Journal

      Well, now you can download it for free.

      Minix [cs.vu.nl]

      If you don't like the licensing terms, then choose Linux. Since that was like kinda of the whole point.

      Linux is a lot of code. But, LOC isn't the most valuable measure of complexity. Although, it can be overwhelming at first. A lot of Linux code won't be of much interest since it will deal with archaic devices and such. But, Linux as an overall system is well-organized. Which will mean as a hobbiest, after you find the parts of system you want to play around with, it should be easy to modify.

      The only real part that will screw you is the fact that as a monolithic kernel, if what you modify has a bug, it can potentially affect every part of the system (but usually it isn't so bad). And, this is usually no worse than any C-type coding unless you are playing around with the file-system.

      More on-topic, I don't see any reason why you'd want to rewrite Minix. There is always this type of bully-ing going on. It doesn't mean that 3rd parties should run off like a bunch of chicken littles. Plus there are other projects like xBSD's or Linux that are not necessarily easy to contribute to, but nevertheless you will affect a lot more people and gain their accolades if successful. Meh, I guess it is their time to waste and there are certainly other less productive things they could be doing.

    • Minix has been free for some time now, though you will want to buy Andrew's textbooks to go along with it.

      Also, there are many other viable OS projects that are small enough to be understood.. Try VsTA for one. Or perhaps one of the projects to create an 'openTOS' ( the os that lives in all the Atari ST' computers )

    • Re:I always wanted to get Minix .. (Score:4, Interesting)

      by anothy ( 83176 ) on Wednesday June 23, 2004 @03:39AM (#9504315) Homepage
      I always wanted to mess around the code on a simple, yet an operating system you could DO something with.
      i highly recommend you check out Plan 9 [bell-labs.com] and/or Inferno [vitanuova.com]. they both come originally from the same Bell Labs group that originally developed unix. they're extremely well-written, with very good code readability and code size/functionality ratio. for serious study, there's an excellent book (PDF available, but you'll have to search the mailing list archives for details) annotating the source of (a slightly outdated version of) the kernel, in the style of the Lions book [peer-to-peer.com]. both are under active development, and Inferno's had (limited) commercial uptake. i know at least two universities that have used them in OS courses. seriously tight systems.

      Plan 9 also has the "distinction" of being the primary inspiration for Hurd, started because Plan 9 was not then free. Plan 9 and Inferno are now both open source, and Plan 9 is also OSI-style Open Source.

  • My god people (Score:5, Funny)

    by Timesprout ( 579035 ) on Tuesday June 22, 2004 @07:28PM (#9501194)
    This could lead to the second coming of Linus !!! Let us rejoice and sacrafice junior VB coders to the Gods of Code.

  • Isn't Minix intentionally incomplete? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 22, 2004 @07:29PM (#9501205)
    It is my understanding that Tannenbaum never wanted Minix to be feature complete because it is a teaching OS, not a production OS. He often rejected submitted patches on these very grounds. The idea was to use Minix in a teaching environment. By keeping Minix simple and incomplete, instructors could tailor lab assignments to provide missing features and extensions.

    Minix is great for teacher and student, but it shouldn't be the first choice for general purpose operating systems. At one time it didn't even have networking (but maybe that has changed).

    • Re:Isn't Minix intentionally incomplete? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) <drink@hyperlogos.org> on Tuesday June 22, 2004 @07:58PM (#9501457) Homepage Journal
      On the other hand, this could lead to a minix renaissance, and minix could actually become a useful operating system in its own right, or at least, a fork thereof.

      Improving minix's feature set could potentially make it a tool for teaching other OS concepts; You could have one class where you use minix, and another where you use SMP minix, or what have you.

      It's still a pretty useful OS for a 286.

  • How about a "DOS from scratch" project? That ought to drive Microsoft NUTS!

  • I don't get it (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Does it make me any less of a geek that I have absolutely no idea what this story is about?

    Let's break it down...

    The MFS - Minix from Scratch project was established in the wake of the Brown-Tannenbaum controversy. MFS aims to be to the Minix community what LFS is to the Linux community, a recipe for building an alternative OS from 'scratch.'

    MSF: nope. NO clue. Macworld San Francisco? Microsoft foundation?

    Minix: something to do with MINI-coopers? Maybe a followup to the MINI/iPod story?

    Brown-Tannenbau

    • ...a dyslexic troll!
    • A word of advice: when an abbreviation (eg "MFS") is used and is immediately followed (usually separated by some punctuation, in this case a dash, but parantheses and commas are also used frequently) by a series of words that has the same initial letters (eg "Minix from Scratch"), then that is normally considered to be a definition of the abbreviation.

      Also, pay attention. The "Brown-Tannenbaum" controversy has been widely reported here and elsewhere. I'm sure some earlier stories relating to it have defi

  • they forgot to mention (Score:3, Funny)

    by rifftide ( 679288 ) on Tuesday June 22, 2004 @07:45PM (#9501334)
    And no peeking at the answers in the back of the book!
  • There's just one thing missing from the site - the actual Minix from scratch instructions.

    Lacking the instructions, this still looks cool and something I'll try in my spare time. Based on the relative differences, this looks a lot more doable timewise than Linux fron Scratch, just based on the relative difference in sizes between the two.

  • missing the point (Score:4, Insightful)

    by fred fleenblat ( 463628 ) on Tuesday June 22, 2004 @07:48PM (#9501364) Homepage
    The tempest in a teacup is over whether an OS could be written from scratch by a single person. Making a shared project out of it fails to prove that a single person can do it. Worse yet, Ken Brown's sense of logic will lead him to cry that it's proof that a single person cannot do it.

    It's probably a fun project, but it isn't really going to prove anything new that reasonable people don't already know. And it will fail to convince unreasonable people of anything.
    • Then here's a better suggestion for MFS:

      We'll have a contest to see how many _single_ developers can design, code and finish
      an operating system similar to Minix(conceptually) with some standards compliance(i.e.POSIX.)
      We'll select a bunch of the most critical subsystems and define those as a Base and give extra
      points for the following:

      - using a language that's not generally used for OS design,

      - designing and coding for portability(more platforms=more points)

      - smallest code base

      - best document

  • What controversy? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Ohreally_factor ( 593551 ) on Tuesday June 22, 2004 @07:49PM (#9501379) Journal
    Ken Brown was full of shit and was quickly debunked by most of those he interviewed and the guy he hired to compare the code. The only controversy exists in his delusional mind and in the minds of other nutjobs. Even MS has distanced themselves from this FUD project, as Ken Brown is so clearly a fool.

  • Some background info (Score:5, Informative)

    by MisterLawyer ( 770687 ) <(mikelawyer) (at) (gmail.com)> on Tuesday June 22, 2004 @07:51PM (#9501393)
    Will Senn had been publicly contemplating this for at least about a month now. I first read about it from his listserv post here [nodak.edu] ("Hi all, I am considering beginning a Minix from Scratch project...")

    It's interesting to see Tannenbaum's influence on Senn:
    "I have to be upfront with you, I am a fair newbie at Minix. I have been using Linux since the 0.9 kernel (downloaded via ftp on VMS in 90s) and have a fairly decent background in Unix - solaris, sco, bsd, etc. I got interested in Minix back around the same time too, but I had success with Linux and stayed with it. I got reminded of Minix the other day when Andrew Tanenbaum posted his response to the 'Brown' book - pure enlightenment - http://www.cs.vu.nl/~ast/brown/."[emphasis added]

    Here is some more background info [gnu.org]on the genesis of the project.

  • A microkernel by the community? (Score:4, Funny)

    by chemstar ( 457943 ) on Tuesday June 22, 2004 @07:53PM (#9501413) Homepage


    Hasn't HURD been trying this for 15 years?

  • I mistook Linux for Minix... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by appleLaserWriter ( 91994 ) on Tuesday June 22, 2004 @07:54PM (#9501423)
    Back in 1992 or 1993, a unix admin suggested that I check out a PC unix called "minix." Back then, "googling" consisted of connecting a ftp clinet to ftp.wustl.edu and manually traversing the directory structure looking for something interesting. I don't remember if it was at ftp.wustl.edu or sunsite.unc.edu, or even on usenet, but I eventually stumbled across this PC unix called "linux." It sounded right, so I went with it.

    Months later, I spoke to the admin again, and found that I was mistaken. Rather than type in thousands of lines of code for an 8086 unix kernel, I had a fully functional linux workstation with X11, ethernet and all the rest of the good stuff that we take for granted today but were PC fantasies in the Windows 3.0 days.

    • Re:I mistook Lindows for Windows... (Score:4, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 22, 2004 @09:09PM (#9502037)
      Back in 2002 or 2003, a Windows admin suggested that I check out a PC operating system called "Windows." Back then, "googling" consisted of pointing a browser at http://www.google.com/ and manually traversing all the porn pages returned looking for something interesting. I don't remember if it was at http://www.google.com/ or http://www.google.de/, or even on http://labs.google.com/, but I eventually stumbled across this PC Windows clone called "Lindows." It sounded right, so I went with it.

      Months later, I spoke to the admin again, and found that I was mistaken. Rather than downling thousands of MegaBytes of files for an unreliable operating system, I had a fairly functional Linux workstation which ran Windows programs, ethernet and all the rest of the good stuff that Linux users take for granted today like reliability and security but are PC fantasies for Windows XP users.
    • I don't know about you, but while "googling" may have been just manually looking around FTP sites, I was using archie back in 92-93. And veronica, to search Gopher sites, some of which had information pointing to FTP sites or containing the files themselves. Things weren't *that* primitive in 92-93.

      I can't say I got X11 to run until 95-96, which my hardware was supported. Didn't have the money to go out and buy a specifically supported video card. Alas. I used to run DesqView/X though, which kicked som
      • was using archie back in 92-93

        Yeah, I remember the archie servers being *very* busy. When you could get on, they were quite useful though. Thanks for the reminder :)

        I can't say I got X11 to run until 95-96, which my hardware was supported.

        Running X on unsupported hardware was half the fun! I had a Diamond SpeedStar 24x. The graphics chip was supported, but the programmable clock chip was officially "undocumented." There was a fairly easy hack that involved running some custom code in order to ge
        • I just had some funky on-board 486 thing. I can't remember what it was now, but a cheapo generic video chip for a cheapo Acer computer. When I finally got X working, it was under RedHat 3; before that I'd always used Slackware [1]. I had this awesome 6-CD set I got from a Hamfest with Debian, Debian-JP, RedHat, Slack and some other stuff. FUN! Sure as hell beat downloading the Slackware disksets (a1.tgz anyone?) from fake AOL accounts... :)

          [1] In my early teens I was a SubGenius, like any good nerdling- a

  • Show me the code! (er, documentation) (Score:5, Informative)

    by Wesley Felter ( 138342 ) <wesley@felter.org> on Tuesday June 22, 2004 @07:57PM (#9501447) Homepage
    Slashdot should stop promoting projects that have nothing more than a Web page.

    MFS looks like it's trying to write a manual for installing Minix. That's fine, but will it really teach "operating system design concepts"? Wouldn't Tanenbaum's textbook be better for that? Linux From Scratch teaches you a lot about Linux, but it doesn't teach you how the kernel works.
  • Controversy? I cant see one, all I can see is that Brown said a lot of BS and was rebutted by Tanenbaum. My 2 cents.
  • Hey, I know! Let's create a new operating system! But we're not actually going to do the work. We'll just put up a wiki, a blog, a web site, a mailing list handler, and let it all happen! It's open source, right? The community does all the work!

    Next!

  • educational tool (Score:2, Insightful)

    by noldrin ( 635339 )
    It seems like a lot of people are missing the point here. Minix is a great way to learn about how operating systems work. A Minix From Scratch project will make it even more useful for this. This will hopefully be a great education tool for people wanting to get into how oeprating systems work. I really don't see it meaning to be a big competitor with GNU/Linux or *BSD
  • I wonder if Brown can be sued if he lies outright and has no way to prove his claims? The book he writes is not a fiction...

    PS My favourite part of Brown's response is:
    ...United States Patent and Trademark Office, an internationally respected agency...
  • Gah. People post stories about Microsoft and include links to microsoft.com, they post stories with links back to slashdot.org ...

    Here [linuxfromscratch.com] is the link for linuxfromscratch.

  • MFS Intent and Purpose Clarified (Score:3, Informative)

    by wsenn ( 790655 ) <.moc.oohay. .ta. .nnesdw.> on Wednesday June 23, 2004 @10:56AM (#9507185)

    MFS - Minix from Scratch

    This project is not intended to replace or compete with ANY existing operating system. It is not an installation FAQ. It is not a DISTRO.

    It is an attempt to make OS design and system internals accessible to the masses in a way that Linux cannot - due in part to its sheer mass and in part to its complexity (what makes it useful as a desktop and enterprise server). Minix provides us with a platform that is well designed, modular and well documented in source code, in addition to being a compact code base from which to spring from.

    The project is in its infancy. A lot of folks have been complaining, here at /., that the project is lacking in output - give us a break, we are less than a month old. We are dependant on collaboration, if you think that there isn't much done yet - do it and you'll be very appreciated - otherwise, watch and learn, we'll get there in time.

    To the many folks who have expressed interest in our little project - thanks, I look forward to working with you.

    Will

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