MINIX newsgroup exists

[Andy Tanenbaum]

The comp.os.minix newsgroup has been set up.  Discussion about MINIX can
now move there, leaving the comp.sys.ibm.pc people to wallow in MS-DOS.
Thanks to all the people who wrote to me and posted notes in support of it.

Some of the topics that might be worth discussing in comp.os.minix are:

 1. Questions of general interest (for other questions, send me mail)
 2. Bug reports
 3. Bug fixes (it is ok to post individual files)
 4. Experience with MINIX on various machines
 5. Discussions about ports to different CPUs, etc.
 6. Discussions about networking, news, uucp, etc., none of which exist now
 7. New drivers
 8. New utilities
 9. Experience with MINIX for use in courses (e.g., sample student projects)

The port of MINIX to the Atari ST is now fully underway.  Please don't ask
me when it will be done, since neither I nor the people doing it know.
As with any software project, the first 99% is the easy part.  I will post
status reports when there is status to report.

Several people have asked me whether MINIX runs on the brand XYZ clone.
It has been briefly tried on a few clones, but not really thoroughly, and I
wouldn't want to promise that it worked on some machine if I wasn't absolutely
sure.  As people get the code and try it out on various machines and with
various nonstandard boards, please post your findings to comp.os.minix.

The same is true of hard disks.  Since MINIX directly addresses the disk
controller, it will only work with controllers that are identical to the
IBM XT or AT.  In fact, it has only been tried on the standard XT and the
(old) 6 MHz AT.  I assume (hope ?) that the (new) 8 Mhz AT uses the same
controller as the old one, even though the drive is larger.  Similarly, I
haven't tried it on the XT-286.    I don't have access to these machines.

Len Tower posted a message comparing GNU, MINIX, and UNIX.  It may be true
that even at $150, GNU is more "free" in some sense than MINIX at $80.
If and when the GNU kernel, device drivers, utilities, and documentation
have been written, debugged, integrated, ported to some common machine, and 
distributed, we can better evaluate it in other ways.

Some people have been having trouble getting through to me.  One person even
posted a note to the world-wide net in desperation.  The address to use for
mail to me about MINIX is minix at cs.vu.nl.  For those people whose mailer
is not yet converted to domain notation, use minix at vu44.uucp, but this will
vanish eventually.

Andy Tanenbaum