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[–] 102 points 2 months ago (27 children)

"was called obsolete" - by 1 person who happened to be the developer of a competing OS/kernel.

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  • [–] 25 points 2 months ago (21 children)

    Tanenbaum also believed that the Intel x86 was on the way out, the very CPU that Linux was hard-coded to run on. On the other hand, Minix was ready to adopt the upcoming RISC tech, which Tanenbaum believed would drive the x86 into extinction.

    A genuine Nostradamus, here.

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  • [–] 22 points 2 months ago (19 children)

    Kinda wish he was right about risc tbh

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  • [–] 19 points 2 months ago (18 children)

    I would argue he was, but it's taking far longer than I'd like

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  • [–] 2 points 2 months ago (17 children)

    Depends if you count ARM too. I was always confused between RISC and RISC-V, and what ARM has anything to do. As I understand ARM is based on RISC, but its closed source. And RISC-V is based on RISC, but open source. Is that correct?

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  • [–] 8 points 2 months ago (1 child)

    ARM is absolutely RISC. It stands for Acorn Risc Machines (or maybe it's "Advanced" now?), and was even then a very cool and promising idea, although it lagged behind in speed for a long time. Until the StrongArm came out, I think.

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  • https://arm.jonpalmisc.com/latest_aarch64/index.html (Just the base instruction set for the latest ARM architecture without any extensions)

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RISC-V_instruction_listings (Look at just the I instructions for the base instruction set without the extensions)

    That's... debatable. While the R in ARM does stand for RISC, there are way too many instructions in the base instruction set of the latest ARM ISA for me to comfortably call it a RISC architecture, especially when compared to RISC-V, which has an extremely slim base instruction set comparatively.

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  • [–] 7 points 2 months ago (13 children)

    RISC isn't a specific architecture, but moreso a design philosophy.

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  • [–] 0 points 2 months ago (12 children)

    So is ARM. Every ARM processor is basically uniq, and that makes it efficient. That's the point of it. RISC as a design philosophy doesn't take over the industry, its specific implementations. My question is not what RISC is, but if ARM is based on RISC and how close it is in their designs to RISC-V. As I understand the company behind ARM took the RISC philosophy and created a closed source system.

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  • [–] 6 points 2 months ago (11 children)

    ARM is a well-defined instruction set architecture (ISA), that in order to implement, must comply with that instruction set and be compatible with other implementations from other vendors.

    RISC is not any sepcific ISA at all, but is rather a more generic term for any ISA that has a small amount of instructions.

    RISC-V, on the other hand, is a well-defined ISA whose implementations are intercompatible with each other. RISC-V is a very specific, royalty-free ISA that comes out of UC Berkeley that adopts the RISC philosophy.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 months ago (10 children)

    ARM is a well-defined instruction set architecture (ISA), that in order to implement, must comply with that instruction set and be compatible with other implementations from other vendors.

    But that's not true. ARM isn't well defined and a single standard, like x86 are. ARM devices are not compatible to each other necessarily. I just had the genius idea to lookup online, I should have done that instead wondering what it is. According to Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARM_architecture_family

    ARM (stylised in lowercase as arm)[a] is a family of RISC instruction set architectures for computer processors.

    The original Berkeley RISC designs were in some sense teaching systems, not designed specifically for outright performance. To the RISC's basic register-heavy and load/store concepts, ARM added a number of the well-received design notes of the 6502.

    So I was correct after all. Also ARM is around since 41 years.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 months ago (2 children)

    Yes, ARM is RISC but it is also well-defined. ARMv9 is backwards compatible with ARMv8. ARMv8 and v9 are 64-bit while ARMv7 and before were 32-bit. Even ARMv9 is technically compatible with ARMv7 because of Aarch32 but that's optional. ARM's versioning is more numerous than x86-64 (which also has v2, v3, etc) but that doesn't mean it's not well defined.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 months ago (1 child)

    Not really. Unlike x86, an ARM implementation doesn't have to be compatible to any of the existing CPUs. That's because of its nature being RISC it can be adapted and changed. There is no core ARM set that has to be implemented by every ARM CPU like x86 does, so that base compatibility is guaranteed. Just because a few CPUs in the family were compatible, doesn't make the entire architecture design well defined... it cannot be by nature being a RISC implementation.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 months ago

    it cannot be by nature being a RISC implementation.

    This statement is just fundamentally wrong. And it looks like someone else explained this better than I did.

    There is no core ARM set that has to be implemented by every ARM CPU like x86 does

    But there is. There is a base ISA. It looks like you have several fundamental misunderstandings...

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  • [–] 2 points 2 months ago (6 children)

    ARM has multiple revisions that are incompatible with each other, such as ARMv7 being incompatible with AARCH64, but each ARMv7 implementation is compatible with other ARMv7 implementations, and each AARCH64 implementation is comaptible with other ARCH64 implementations, otherwise something like Android APKs or Linux binaries built for AARCH64 would only be able to be run on SoCs from a single company instead of being able to run on SoCs from Qualcomm, Samsung, Nvidia, and Mediatek just the same like they are.

    Just because ARM does not maintain backwards compatability does not invalidate my point.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 months ago (5 children)

    Just because ARM does not maintain backwards compatability does not invalidate my point.

    It does. ARM is basically a set of RISC processors that each of them are different. There is no single ARM well defined instruction set, because every ARM CPU is incompatible and an implementation of the RISC idea. You cannot say ARM is well defined. But you can say x86 is well defined.

    I mean 80s computers had ARM CPUs, that has nothing todo with todays ARM anymore. This is not what I would call "well-defined".

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  • [–] 2 points 2 months ago (4 children)

    If backwards compatibility bothers you, then replace it with "a series of well defined ISAs", which still does not define the RISC philosophy as a whole, which is the entire point I'm trying to make.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 months ago (3 children)

    If backwards compatibility bothers you, then replace it with “a series of well defined ISAs”

    This is exactly what I'm saying, its not well defined architecture. You never know if the next ARM CPU will be compatible or not to any existing variants.

    which still does not define the RISC philosophy as a whole

    What do you mean? ARM is a RISC CPU. The entire philosophy of RISC is that anyone can implement this RISC system, and no guarantees are made to be compatible with any prior CPU. We have RISC CPUs since the beginning of 80s.

    The official Acorn RISC Machine (ARM) project started in October 1983.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 months ago (2 children)

    RISC literally just means reduced instruction set architecture. Any CPU that has a small amount of instructions (defined somewhat arbitrarilly) is considered to be a RISC CPU as opposed to a CISC (complex instruction set architecture) CPU. The idea behind RISC is to improve performance by reducing bloat, but the tradeoff is that performing more complex tasks takes more instructions to do.

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  • [–] 0 points 2 months ago (1 child)

    Yes, but they could have compatibility like x86. The difference is that every CPU creator can have different sets, not just a superset. That's why ARM is not well defined, because its by nature cannot be. There is no definition of what an ARM or RISC CPU has to offer or be compatible to.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 months ago

    ARM is a series of ISAs, which are strict definitions which CPUs must conform to to be considered ARM compatible. RISC has no set or sets of ISAs, and is more of a philosophy.

    If one company, like Mediatek or Qualcomm makes an AARCH64 CPU, compiles a binary for a common operating system, like Linux, and wants to run it on the others' CPU, that is possible because the ISA for AARCH64 is strictly defined.

    On the other hand, take two incompatible RISC architectures, say one CPU that uses MIPS and another RISC-V, and try to run binaries compiled for the other architecture, then try to run it. It will not run because they are inherently incompatible, even though they are both a subset of the wider RISC umbrella.

    Also depending on which ARM assembly programmer you ask, modern ARM isn't even really RISC due to its complexity despite the name. That is a whole other unrelated conversation, though.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 months ago

    IBM PC and Apple Mac are both based on the same thing: the idea of a personal computer. IBM PC even put "PC" in the name.

    You can definitely tell that they were designed with similar principles in mind, but they are not in any way compatible on a technical level.

    ARM and RISC-V are both based on the same thing: the idea of a reduced instruction set. RISC-V even put "RISC" in the name.

    You can definitely tell that they were designed with similar principles in mind, but they are not in any way compatible on a technical level.

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  • [–] 29 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (4 children)

    And was Linus's teacher for Operating Systems in Helsinki

    Write the book on Operating Systems that Torvalds said inspired him to make Linux.

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  • [+] -6 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (3 children)

    At university?

    You mean docent I presume. Universities do not exactly have teachers.

    Resident or visiting?


    edit: in my country docent is the normal term for people giving lectures at universities. Or prof, but not all of them are actual professors. Seems I - once again - got caught up in translation. You native english speakers do you! But universities - even in english speaking countries - work differently from schools. To put it shortly, it is up to you to teach yourself from the material you get from lecturers. So in a way you are your own teacher.

    Besides, I made this comment to reply to a doubtful statement, which the commenter almost immediately retracted (but didn't delete completely to their credit).

    ... I'm curious how many more replies this will attract.

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  • [–] 14 points 2 months ago*

    I think universities do have teachers, but that's beside the point.

    Anyway I misremembered and it was just that Tanenbaum wrote the OS book that Torvalds had during undergrad.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 months ago

    Docent makes me think of guides at museums. When I was in uni (well, I called it "college", being from the US), the usual title was "professor". But if you'd asked who my teacher was for a particular class, I'd have known what you meant.

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  • [–] 48 points 2 months ago (2 children)

    Windows was called obsolete (by me) years ago, and it's abandoned (by me) since mid 2024.

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  • [–] 7 points 2 months ago

    In 1987, Bill Gates predicted in an interview that in 3 years time, 80% of new office systems would be based on OS/2, an operating system from IBM.

    The first release of Windows was in 1985, so that Computerworld interview was basically Bill Gates calling Windows obsolete.

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  • [–] 24 points 2 months ago (1 child)

    ... and millions of phones 🙃

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  • [–] 23 points 2 months ago (4 children)

    I mean, if it were for novelty and "cleverness" then it would be Plan-9 (or BeOS) the one who shoulda take over. At the end of the day both Linux.and Minix are both following the UNIX model which even at that time it already was "obsolete". But reality is often more pragmatic

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  • [–] 5 points 2 months ago (2 children)

    Honestly plan9 is neat but it suffers from being incredibly stringy and so does Linux / unix.

    There's some new paradigms out there that probably need to be uncovered. Computers have way more processing capabilities then they did in the 90s

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  • [–] 5 points 2 months ago (1 child)

    More processing power means new paradigms are less likely to be uncovered, I think. The deficiencies of current designs are obscured, and maybe moot, due to the raw power the processors. There isn’t any real pressure to improve kernel design.

    All of the big current kernels (NT, Linux, XNU) are rooted in the i386 era. There’s certainly been a lot of changes in all of them but I don’t know if any have been completely re-architected.

    Might have to wait for some kind of completely new processor before we see completely new kernels.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 months ago

    It's not a processing problem, it's a interface problem. Somethings are just easier to use or more functional based on how they are built.

    Take a look at nixos, the large increase in compute has allowed for smarter package managers that can do complex validation.

    Or rust for example and it's compilers. It's more expensive to compile then something like c but there's lots of benefits to its model.

    Just because old things are cheap to do doesn't mean they can't be advanced. Everything is a give and a take.

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  • [–] 15 points 2 months ago (3 children)

    I mean, from what we learnt on university the "messiness" of a monolithic kernel seems "wrong" and a microkernel arch seems "better design". Once you spend a couple of decades in the workforce and opening your mind... I haven't seen a single "good modular design" that doesn't suck balls, super bloated and with many performance issues just to make it "pretty".

    So, while I'm not claiming it doesn't exist... I think is at the very least debatable.

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  • [–] 7 points 2 months ago (2 children)

    Also, in 1992, when this article came out: you couldn't just walk into Walmart and get a CD with Debian or Slackware on it (still cant but thats another story). If you wanted the latest reliable word processor, email, hardware drivers and access to excel you basically had no choice but to slap down $100 for a Windows or OSx install. Only enthusiasts, academics and scientists had the bandwidth capacity to download and update an entire OS in 1992. CD burners themselves were $10 000 in 1992.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 months ago (1 child)

    TBF, in 1992 you might have had a hard time getting slackware at all since it was officially released in 1993.

    However, when I first used it around 1997, it was just a stack of floppies, no CD needed.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

    That's painful. I had a proper purchased slackware 3.1 CD in 1997.

    I tried a two-diskette non-distro from "so much shareware 2". I think it was minted in 1993 and labelled Linux 0.99b

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  • [–] 13 points 2 months ago (4 children)

    Tanenbaum laid out why his hobby OS beat out Linus Torvalds' own pet project.

    The primary reason why Linux beat out Minix, is that Tannenbaum wouldn't allow Minix to win. There was a desperate need for an open source Unix-derived OS at the time, and many people wanted Minix to become that, but Tannenbaum wanted to keep it clean and educational. FreeBSD could have been it had Linus not created Linux, but he did so at exactly the right time for it to be embraced by the community and launched into the stratosphere.

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  • [–] 10 points 2 months ago (2 children)

    It's more to the credit of RMS, who was looking for a kernel to join GNU. And he picked Linux.

    1989 was when the GPL was written, so this followed a few years later.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 months ago (1 child)

    There's no single individual that made it happen, but no doubt that Linus and RMS were the two biggest. Bear in mind that there were lots of additional contributors to the kernel and GNU as well.

    I also think Red Hat was also one of the biggest contributors to Linux's success. So many of the most important technologies that we use today came out of RH. I don't have a lot of love for them today, but their contributions in the '90s and '00s was immense.

    I actually think that a large part of the reason why PCs are much better open platforms than mobiles is because there is no Red Hat of the mobile ecosystem. Google started it out with AOSP, but then closed it up when they monopolized the market. Makes you wonder if RH would have done the same if they had the same kind of success.

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  • [–] 7 points 2 months ago

    Launched into the stratosphere is the perfect phrase for it. It's had decade after decade after decade of crazy effort put into it. I'm sure that when looked back on from a future era it will be remembered as the first true example of human collaboration without boundaries. Kinda neat

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  • [–] 8 points 2 months ago

    It powers servers, smartphones, a growing number of personal computers, and at least three gaming consoles (Deck, Machine, Legion Go S), with more coming.

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  • [–] 7 points 2 months ago (1 child)

    And it captured our hearts along the way. I bet few of us knew it existed in '92.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

    I had no clue how to operate a computer in '92. Pretty sure I had no clue what MSDOS was, much less what Linux was. Was a few years later that I actually got my first PC and started to learn stuff.

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  • [–] 6 points 2 months ago (4 children)

    Remember Windows Server? LMAO

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  • [–] 1 point 2 months ago (2 children)
  • [–] 5 points 2 months ago (8 children)

    It might not have the relevance that Linux has gained, but Minix is an operating system that you can run today. Ymmv.

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  • [–] 8 points 2 months ago (3 children)
  • [–] 4 points 2 months ago (2 children)

    You know this is actually kind of funny, cause I think it might be very possible that the roles between Tanenbaum and Intel could hypothetically be reversed.

    There was a controversy a couple of years ago, with Wizards of the Coast and D&D, where they were planning on making a bunch of really bad and sweeping changes to the Open Gaming License. One of the controversies had to do with the license not having language for irrevocability, which Wizards believed allowed them to go ahead and deny people the right to make use of the old OGL moving forward, forcing everyone who publishes their OGL content to adhere to their new, more restrictive, license terms.

    They never moved forward with the bullshit because the backlash was that bad, but supposedly licenses are not irrevocable by default, and so any license that lacks explicit language granting irrevocable rights can be susceptible to the same rug pull that WotC almost pulled.

    And the last time I checked, guess which super permissive license does not grant irrevocability?

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  • [–] 1 point 2 months ago (1 child)

    It'd only work if someone did it with some PITA dependency that no company wants to actually throw resources at, but it would be hilarious to see Intel or Amazon make a big hissy fit over a random MIT project used in millions of systems getting revoked lmao.

    Bonus if it affects Amazon because they already refuse to use AGPL software lol.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 months ago

    The thing that concerns me is the precedent it can set. At least according to this source, MIT is about the 3rd most popular open-source license. If one rightsholder decides to pull a WotC, how many will follow suit? Honestly think that license is a potential minefield.

    (And just want to point out, this is not a matter of permissive vs copyleft. I think it's more a question of competency. The MIT license is just not a very rigorously written license from a legal standpoint. If you are a dev who wants similar features to the MIT but more carefully crafted, then the Apache 2.0 license is probably what you want. Otherwise if you want the closest thing to opting out of Copyright all together, then the Creative Commons Zero public domain pledge is your best choice).

    And lastly, the Hippocratic License is worth looking into if other ethical considerations are something you need as well.

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  • [–] 5 points 2 months ago (3 children)

    That you do run today (even though you don't know it), most likely.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 months ago (2 children)

    If you have a modern Intel processor. Some of us went AMD to avoid all that, although it's not exactly clear what's running in the negative rings of those either.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 months ago

    Not only Servers.. Most of the VR Headsets, many TV's, most mobile phones, a lot of automation systems, etc.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 months ago

    Tanenbaum is still around

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  • [–] 2 points 2 months ago

    "...but ‘vector’ is a useless survival, or offshoot from quaternions, and has never been of the slightest use to any creature." - Lord Kelvin

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  • [–] 1 point 2 months ago

    Always has been

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  • [–] 1 point 2 months ago

    TBH a lot of Posix API stuff are designed around now obsolete hardware limitations, but nothing that can't be solved with some committee, that will design a new API, by committee.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

    How? Torvolds released the Linux kernel in 91, lol.

    Oh, maybe because UNIXWare 1.0 (System V 4.2) came out in 1992, the first major release in years. :P 🖕

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  • [–] 1 point 2 months ago

    Linux obsolete before windows 95 , lol

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  • [–] 1 point 2 months ago

    It's a old design shoe horned to do modern things. That's fine but yeah.... Obviously something more modern would be nice.

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  • [–] -1 points 2 months ago (7 children)

    Called "obsolete" by whom? Microsoft?

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  • [–] 2 points 2 months ago (3 children)

    Andy Tannembaum. Mi ix is microkernel. Linux is monolithic

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  • [–] 2 points 2 months ago (2 children)

    I've been there with the MINIX debate back then. I've actually used MINIX on a job back then. Tannenbaum knows his stuff, but with that, he was completely off. I don't think that most people in the Linux scene nowadays have ever heard of him or his OS. So much for relevance.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 month ago

    Minix in a sense is more successful than Linux as it runs in every Intel as a backdoor for the NSA.

    Not sure if Minix is still used as a teaching OS but I'm the textbook is still likely around.

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