Comparing Linux and Minix

Comparing Linux and Minix

Frankly, and for the first time, I would like to mark this article as
bad.

For one thing, and as it has been noticed elswhere, comparing in speed a
highly tunned kernel, to a university proof of concept really is unfair.

Secondly, it is unfair too to include a comparaison to primitiviness of
the Minix distribution when the main article should be about comparing
Linux "the kernel" to Minix "the kernel". Otherwise one might as wel
compair any one floppy Linux distribution to Minix, and then Minix might
come out gloriously.

Furthermore the graphic used halfway the page, which is also the main
compairing argument to how bad Minix really is, is very cunningly
obfuscated so as to show nothing at all (the first one is not beter, but
since both lines on it are nearly identical, there is less need for an
explanation). After having discovered in the text that Linux was the top
bar, my first impression of the graphic was that Minix was much much
faster then Linux, except for the shell script test where the opposite
was true. I got the same impression from the raw numbers, which were even
harder to compaire since they where on different pages. In other words,
the legend is missing, the explanation is bad, no scale: thus worthless.

Don't get me wrong, I'm glade somebody made an attempt to compaire both
linux and minix, if only to try to show the differences between both. I
only think it is sade to see such an amalgam of quick conclusions based
on the same speed tests which never seem to show anything except the
correctness of the testers preconception.

Because of the gigantic differences of maturity, the task of compairing
both kernels is probably currenly impossible. I suspect you wanted to
show a clear conclusion, however to me the conclusion you came up with
seem like something you pulled out of a hat.

Ernest ter Kuile.