back to article Andrew Tanenbaum honored for pioneering MINIX, the OS hiding in a lot of computers

Andy Tanenbaum, creator of MINIX, has been recognized for his code, seminal textbooks, and wider educational influence over much of the modern FOSS world. Dr Andrew S Tanenbaum – often known as "ast" for short – has been honored in the ACM Technical Awards 2023 with the Association for Computing Machinery's Software System …

  1. Paul Crawford Silver badge
    Pint

    Tanenbaum's arguments for cleaner, simpler, more modular software architecture have been rebutted by the wild success of Linux

    It seems that all OS become horrible big bloated blobs for one reason or another. The original NT kernel was supposed to follow this modular goal to achieve security and reliability, but quickly ended up with huge graphics sub-systems included for speed (number of CPU context switches otherwise). Other micro kernels exist and have had some commercial success, but most people need all sorts of hardware and software support so they end up tied to Windows or Linux, both of which have issues due to their approaches.

    However, a beer for AST =>

  2. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

    Microkernels are the future

    Of course, for performance reasons, we have had to move the file-system, graphics and the web browser into the kernel.

    Except for that of course we are totally committed to microkernels

    1. Spazturtle Silver badge

      Re: Microkernels are the future

      Nintendo seem to find the performance of microkernels ok, both IOS on the Wii and Wii U, and Horizon on the 3DS and Switch are microkernel OSs.

      1. theOtherJT Silver badge

        Re: Microkernels are the future

        As a vertically integrated company with total control over their hardware, OS, and the programs running on said OS (If you don't pay your dues to Nintendo, you don't get to release on their platform) They can make basically anything work. They just have to define what they consider acceptable performance throughout the whole stack.

        That's not to take away from the fact that I think the argument against microkernels from a performance standpoint is probably the better part of a quarter-century out of date at this point mind you.

        1. Paul Crawford Silver badge

          Re: Microkernels are the future

          AFIK it was not simple the context-switch that was the performance hit, it was changing privileged 'ring' levels that was expensive.

          You could do a "high security" micro-kernel properly, when every time it goes from kernel to the drivers (disk, network, graphics, etc) you drop privileges to maintain security. AFIK that was the performance reason NT 4.0 ended up with graphics as ring-0, and so BSOD prone due to driver faults.

          Or you could keep some of the software simplicity and modularity of the micro-kernel idea and (assuming you trust them...) run drivers without a ring-change and that hit, maybe for "release" code that has already been well debugged (we know how that went).

          I have no idea how Nintendo works but if they have high performance that might be the route.

        2. Lars
          Linux

          Re: Microkernels are the future

          Why would the argument against microkernels from a performance standpoint change over time. If there is more internal traffic in a microkernel then there is more internal traffic in the future too.

          I think it's more about what is easier to change and keep updated for programmers than anything else and there is good logic to use a microkernel for teaching too as it's probably easier to read too.

          I think people who have programmed years in machine code, like I have, will understand this easily, especially if they did that long ago when there was a constant demand of more speed with slow hardware.

      2. Dan 55 Silver badge

        Re: Microkernels are the future

        The Wii and Wii U at least are more like exokernals in that the kernal provides a few services and libraries can directly access the hardware.

        And of course the OG exokernal (before MIT came up with the name) was AmigaOS.

        1. theOtherJT Silver badge

          Re: Microkernels are the future

          For a games console that would certainly make sense. The major benefit of having the OS deal with all the hardware abstraction because "who actually knows what real hardware you might be targeting?" doesn't exist there. As a developer you know exactly what hardware you're targeting because every console will be exactly the same.

        2. Stuart Castle Silver badge

          Re: Microkernels are the future

          Re "And of course the OG exokernal (before MIT came up with the name) was AmigaOS."

          Ahh Amiga OS. I had an Amiga for years, and I still miss it. Unfortunately, had to get rid because I started a degree and needed a PC for my coursework.

          While AmigaOS looks dated now (it *is* dated), It was a powerful OS in it's time. Very forward thinking in it's design. Of course, it didn't have the security headaches a modern OS has to contend with.

    2. StrangerHereMyself Silver badge

      Re: Microkernels are the future

      I don't agree. MMURTL too is a free and open-source (public domain) microkernel and its performance matches that of most monolithic kernels. Part of this is due to it having been written in assembly, not C or C++.

      Besides, performance isn't everything. In many safety critical applications it takes a backseat to reliability and security and microkernels are still useful in those settings. Also, CPU's have become so fast that performance isn't a issue for all except those who seek the fastest performance for things like gaming. For most tasks the processor speed hardly matters.

  3. Alistair
    Windows

    I have project in flight to reorganize our book shelves. Still on my "computing" shelf is my MINIX ring binder, and tucked away in a nook somewhere in the basement are the 1.44Mb floppies. I suspect I learned more about computing concepts playing with MINIX, and reading the source code in that binder, and the concise, logical commentary, than I have from well over two dozen courses I've taken in the years since. That ring binder of source code and commentary will remain in its place of honour.

    Its about damn time *someone* gave ast some kudos

  4. Richard Tobin

    386

    "many early internet hackers worked on the original MINIX, porting it from x86-16 [sic – this was an 8086 OS] to 68000 and SPARC"

    The most significant work (at least in my opinion - I played a part in it) was getting a 32-bit x86 version running, and improving the system libraries to the point where gcc and emacs could run. That's what Linus built the first Linux with.

  5. Gene Cash Silver badge

    no changes to its source code since 2018, which is a great shame

    Is it really? Like you say, "It's a lot more amenable to study than the gigantic Linux kernel." and this is *because* no one is going "let's add support for..."

    1. Neil Barnes Silver badge
      Coat

      Re: no changes to its source code since 2018, which is a great shame

      Oh, _surely_ there's room for systemd?

      Never mind, I'll get it myself, thanks!

      1. David 132 Silver badge
        Happy

        Re: no changes to its source code since 2018, which is a great shame

        > Never mind, I'll get it myself, thanks!

        Well now what am I supposed to do with this pitchfork, flaming torch, bucket of hot tar, and bag of feathers?

        1. Zippy´s Sausage Factory
          Coat

          Re: no changes to its source code since 2018, which is a great shame

          > Well now what am I supposed to do with this pitchfork, flaming torch, bucket of hot tar, and bag of feathers?

          I honestly don't know, but I'm sure Google's AI could suggest a good recipe.

          1. BartyFartsLast Silver badge

            Re: no changes to its source code since 2018, which is a great shame

            Pizza!

  6. Primus Secundus Tertius

    Also networking

    The ast book I have is 'Computer Networks', in 1st and 3rd editions. The first edition is now a museum piece, devoted to IBM System Network Architecture and to DECnet. The Arpanet is an up and coming thing in many non-commercial sites.

    1. Eclectic Man Silver badge

      Re: Also networking

      Is that the book in which he describes the creators of Ethernet as 'wanting a network that would actually work, rather than just another standard'?

  7. Stumpy

    I have a copy of Tanenbaum's Computer Networks, 2nd ed. (from around 1990-ish) sat on my bookshelf, along with copies of Modern Operating Systems, 4th ed. and OS Design and Implementation, 3rd ed.

    Cracking books, and the foundation of much of my systems knowledge. This recognition is, IMHO, well overdue and much deserved. Kudos Mr Tanenbaum.

  8. chololennon
    Pint

    Well deserved recognition...

    I still have a copy of his book "Modern Operating Systems" from 1992 which I used in a university course in... 1994 :-O Great book, thanks AST, and thanks Liam for the article, fond memories.

  9. C R Mudgeon

    "The nice thing about standards is that you have so many to choose from; furthermore, if you do not like any of them, you can just wait for next year's model."

    - from his "Computer Networks", 1981

    (I don't have the original available to check against, so no guarantee that errors haven't crept in.)

    1. Liam Proven (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge
      Facepalm

      [Author here]

      I did not know that was one of his!

      My favourite line of his is "never underestimate the bandwidth of a truck full of tapes hurtling down the highway." I should have added a quotes section.

      1. ICL1900-G3 Silver badge

        You beat me to it. Struggling with TPF/ALC at the time, I looked at that truck enviously. Our links to BA were 2400 baud initially. Admittedly, we had four... luxury!

    2. StrangerHereMyself Silver badge

      In terms of networking we've gone from a plethora of choices to a monoculture.

      I can still remember in the early 90's a whole bunch of network protocol drivers being available in Windows NT and Windows for Workgroups 3.1. Today, none of that. Many operating systems these days have TCP/IP hardcoded in the kernel ;)

      1. Michael Wojcik Silver badge

        There are still SNA networks, and no doubt others as well. TCP/IP dominates but it isn't quite the only game in town.

        And, of course, there are the lower- and higher-level protocols, and there are various flavors of TCP/IP (congestion-control algorithms and that sort of thing). It's not like nothing interesting happens in networking any more.

        1. StrangerHereMyself Silver badge

          Basically, no.

          There may be some local, specialized shops which have SNA for their mainframes, but 99.9% of the world runs on TCP/IP these days.

  10. Bebu
    Windows

    linux.conf.au Sydney 2007

    Andrew Tanenbaum's keynote was introduced by Linus Torvalds.

    AST's enduring contribution might well be the effect of his various text books have had on their readers.

    I would think Linux is one such example. Minix was possibly the only open source posix~ish OS at that time. Even Coherent was closed source and BSD mired in an attritional law suit. I will always remember booting a 5.25" minux floppy on a 80186 PC with two visual 102 terminals connected to the two com ports and being able to run multiple logins. Clearly PC hardware was capable of more than msdos single tasking or Windows 2.0 cooperative multitasking.

    I guess with the advent of the 80386 and enough people working on open source including minix Linus provided the spark that ignited the tinder of an explosion (big bang:) of FOSS creativity that dominates modern computing.

    One thing I do recall about AST was that I received a reply, after emailing him, concerning the source of a quote in Modern Operating Systems. As it turned out he wasn't exactly sure of its exact origin. (I think I traced it to St Exupery's writings.)

    I was rather impressed that he took the trouble to reply.

    A well deserved award!

    1. david 12 Silver badge

      Re: linux.conf.au Sydney 2007

      My experience is that people who write books, while they may be difficult in person, are comfortable with writing things down.

      To us, writing a letter is more difficult than just talking to someone.

    2. MacroRodent

      Re: linux.conf.au Sydney 2007

      Those were the days when even well-known netizens did not yet get avalanches of mail, and spam was still almost non-existent. So they were more disposed to answer interesting mails.

      I once mailed a minor bug in an early version of GCC to Stallman, and he quickly replied with a patch. That was probably around 1990.

  11. Glenn Amspaugh

    Heh, I still have a 512k Mac toaster with no HD, booting from a Minix 3 floppy, before swapping out disks and loading a web server.

    Minix 3 is a great learning tool.

  12. steelpillow Silver badge
    Joke

    Oh, Christmas!

    There is a famous German ode to him. I like the second verse best, very appropriate:

    "O Tannenbaum, o Tannenbaum, Du kannst mir sehr gefallen!

    "Wie oft hat nicht zur Weihnachtszeit Ein Baum von dir mich hoch erfreut!

    "O Tannenbaum, o Tannenbaum, Du kannst mir sehr gefallen!"

    Or, in loose translation:

    "O Christmas Tree, O Christmas Tree, With what delight I see you!

    "When winter days are dark and drear You bring us hope for all the year.

    O Christmas Tree, O Christmas Tree, With what delight I see you!"

    Oh, wait...

  13. John Smith 19 Gold badge
    Unhappy

    So find a bug in Mimix 3, get root access to the Intel Management Engine.

    As if Intel would write a bug-free anything.

    1. StrangerHereMyself Silver badge

      Re: So find a bug in Mimix 3, get root access to the Intel Management Engine.

      IME is the reason I insist on buying PC hardware with an AMD processor.

  14. Golgafrinch

    According to the article,

    'Arguably, Tanenbaum's arguments for cleaner, simpler, more modular software architecture have been rebutted by the wild success of Linux, despite its "obsolete" design." '

    Very arguable indeed, for what it's Wirth ...

  15. abufrejoval

    Microkernels, those were the times...

    I bought the book. And that might have included floppy disks, I don't remember. And if I ever ran it, it wasn't for long or for much.

    But just like Linus, I didn't really read the book in full.

    I had already read the Unix v6 sources in full, in my CS classes at university.

    When Linus decided that jumps to task state segments on a 80386 would make task switching fit on a singe page of code, I had been using QNX, UnixWare, Lynn's and Bill's 386BSD, and a competing µ-kernel called AX for for years: Linux combined the worst of everything and I ignored it for years, because I actually had full access to Unix and AX source codes, too, and could compare: I was not impressed by what I saw, I fully agreed with Jochen Liedke (of L4 fame).

    QNX was really cool and very usable already on the tiniest 8086 even without any MMU and AX was likewise made for Suprenum supercomputers with lots of pure compute notes that had no I/O whatsoever. So in that sense Minux wasn't that much better than Linux as a badly made monolithic Unix clone, because it didn't make distributed computing the default.

    The competition was Moshe Bar with his Mosix kernels or Transputers, who did that in hardware and at the Occam language level.

    What completely destroyed all that computer science for a decade or two was the clock race: who would have thought that a lowly 8086 successor could outperform a "Cray on a chip" iAPX 860 and run at several Gigahertz?

    Today it's all to multi-cores, but instead of dozens, it's millions of GPUs with thousands of cores each: all Unixoids were ever trying to do was to offer Multics abstractions at vastly inferior cost. And Multics was all about multiplexing a single incredibly powerful CPU among as many users as possible to create the illusion of everyone having their own [single] CPU.

    1. Joe Burmeister

      Re: Microkernels, those were the times...

      Lions' Commentary?

  16. John Smith 19 Gold badge
    Unhappy

    who would have thought that a lowly 8086 successor could outperform a

    Anyone who knew where Intel made most of its money and saw how much cash it was throwing at which design? Anyone who realised that compile time code re-ordering for optimal efficiency under both cache hit and cache miss (or partial cache-miss) could be a bit tricky? And by "A bit tricky" I mean claimed ability was way beyond what could be routinely achieved IRL.

    The term "Code museum" comes up quite regularly.

    It's interesting that the microcode for new Pentium processors is described as 3 address. Like an ARM in fact.

    ARM inside?

  17. StrangerHereMyself Silver badge

    Recognition

    Tanenbaum gets the recognition he deserved even though his shortsightedness concerning not open-sourcing Minix has held back computing advances, like microkernels, decades.

    And it also led to the creation of Linux which is far from perfect, but illustrated the universal need for a free and open-source operating system. As the article states: had Tanenbaum not opted for the money grab by licensing the code to Prentice-Hall the world could've looked very different today.

    AST is first and foremost an educator, not an individual seeking to change the world. His textbooks are a must-read for every aspiring computer and software engineer.

    1. Cliffwilliams44 Silver badge

      Re: Recognition

      Knowing what scumbag, money grubbing, scrooges the publishing houses are (and were back in those days) I would assume licensing the OS was part of the deal to get his book published.

      These are the same type of people who sued a community web site for sharing guitar tabs (a music notation for guitarists and bass players) for published music. One they eventually lost, thankfully.

      And recently they sued online libraries for sharing digital copies of books even though the libraries adhered to the 1 paid for copy downloaded per user rule (same as physical libraries)

      1. Dave95060

        Re: Recognition

        OLGA, rest in peace...

  18. MacroRodent

    Floppies...

    Remember copying the original Minix floppies among some friends. Each had bought the Tanenbaum book, then we pooled money for getting one copy of the OS. As I recall ast wrote he and the publisher were OK with some copies of the software being made for study. The version of the kernel on the floppies was not quite the same as printed in the book, but slightly updated one. Managed to run in on a PC/XT clone. It did not even require a hard disk.

  19. Wiretrip

    I have vivid memories of studying MINIX for my OS module at uni. At one point in my life I knew how a disk read request was processed with initmate detail! I still have the textbooks! I quite enjoyed the kernel flamewars myself :-) Let's raise a glass for AST :-)

    1. herman Silver badge

      Those were the days

      I wrote a floppy disk cache for Minix as a comp sci project.

  20. Locomotion69 Bronze badge

    Congratulations!

    My congratulations to Dr. Tanenbaum!

    And thank you for your contribution to the field of computer science. I still own my copy of "Operating Systems" used in my study now 30+ years ago.

    The source code is for those who really want to see MINIX from closeby, but the concepts around an OS that are explained in the book are valuable to these days - at stretches beyond MINIX.

    Indeed well deserved!

  21. It depends.....
    Pint

    Kudos to Tanenbaum

    I am so very glad to see the warm appreciation being shown towards ast on this thread. His books are some of the clearest written books that any aspiring learner of Computer Science could ever wish to read. Like others in this comments section, I too had copies of Tanenbaum's 3 books - Computer Networks, Modern Operating Systems and OS Design and Implementation. These were all "bibles" to us back 'when I were a lad'/undergrad (between 1988-92).

    And when I say that his books were clear and well written - case in point. I got my Mum to read the opening chapters of Modern Operating Systems and in just one evening, she took in those chapters and really understood the basics/background that were contained in those opening chapters. My Mum left school aged 14 without a single 'O' Level or qualification to her name and basically spent her entire working life working in laundries. Yet a 50-something lady with no formal education grasped the basics of how modern computers worked simply in one evening simply because ast had that ability to impart knowledge in a clear and easy to read manner. I struggle to name any other authors since then who have had that same ability to "impart knowledge so easily".

    The guy deserves all the plaudits that he gets and he certainly helped me on the path that has taken me to where I am today (a 54 year old who has been working in IT constantly since graduating back in 1992).

  22. TonyHoyle

    I remember minix.. first 'real' OS I ever ran. It was expensive - you had to buy the book to get it and £50 was a lot for a student in the 1980s. It was horrifically slow, running on the underpowered x86 machine I had at the time, and of course there was no internet (that an ordinary mortal like me could get access to, anyway) so no networking. But I really enjoyed playing with it.

    It would be 10 years until I used anything like it again when I got some slackware floppies (possibly off a coverdisk?).

    I never read the book.. too academic for me (I was always a hands on kind of person), but undoubtedly if he'd never written it linux might never have existed.

  23. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    MINIX and the Intel ME-11 management engine chip

    An Open Letter to Intel

    “Thanks for putting a version of MINIX inside the ME-11 management engine chip used on almost all recent desktop and laptop computers in the world.”

  24. ICL1900-G3 Silver badge

    Atari ST

    I ran it on my ST in preference to TOS. The amount of free software was, for the time, amazing. Unix at work, almost-Unix at home.

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