On Mar 10, 2011, at 8:18 AM, John Stalberg wrote >>>> >>>> By the time Linus "invented" Linux that problem had been solved. ... those >>>> were interesting times. >>> >>> "invented" == built upon Andrew Tanenbaum's Minix. >> >> Yeah, but who ever heard of Minux except old Unix heads. I doubt many Linux >> users know what it is/was. ... :) >> > What? Linux and Minix are fundamentally different. The Minix predates Linux > but one doesn't need two search hard to find them to be discussed by the > original authours and by others were there are absolute concensus about the > difference. > > I submit a link to a foil hat who in his attempt to miscrerdit Linus and the > Linux early coders with accusation about code theft acctually brought the > Minix authour Tanenbaum on himself.
At least through v0.97, Linux still looked and acted very much like Minix. I kept forgetting I wasn't using Minix and was often surprised and delighted when function keys did what I expected them to do. Next time I looked (some years later), all the Minix similarities were gone. Perhaps Tannenbaum was just being nice (accusations of plagiarism are after all, frowned upon) -- I don't know because I never personally looked at the actual code -- but I've always assumed that Linux did in fact start out as a 32bit-only Minix (IIRC Minix would also run on 286). Even if it is a mistake to make such an assumption, I cannot fault anyone else for thinking that because I've always thought that too. -Michael _______________________________________________ MacOSX-admin mailing list [email protected] http://www.omnigroup.com/mailman/listinfo/macosx-admin
