New MINIX release for x86 and ARM is BSD compatible [LWN.net]

New MINIX release for x86 and ARM is BSD compatible

Posted Sep 17, 2014 21:01 UTC (Wed) by rgmoore (✭ supporter ✭, #75)
In reply to: New MINIX release for x86 and ARM is BSD compatible by k8to
Parent article: New MINIX release for x86 and ARM is BSD compatible

Given that MINIX has been iterating for longer than Linux, how much time are you going to give it?

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New MINIX release for x86 and ARM is BSD compatible

Posted Sep 17, 2014 23:51 UTC (Wed) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link] (2 responses)

Is it time or number of iterations that matters more? When was the last MINIX release? There's a new Linux kernel every week (or so). And that's only counting Linus.

New MINIX release for x86 and ARM is BSD compatible

Posted Sep 19, 2014 13:38 UTC (Fri) by rgmoore (✭ supporter ✭, #75) [Link] (1 responses)

Is it time or number of iterations that matters more?

I would say time for two reasons:

Number of iterations is very imprecise. Some projects have frequent, small iterations and some have occasional large ones. That makes number of iterations pretty useless as a measure.
My life is measured in time, not in iterations. Minix has been developing for a substantial fraction of a human lifetime, which matters a lot to somebody who's hoping to use it for something practical.

New MINIX release for x86 and ARM is BSD compatible

Posted Sep 20, 2014 22:51 UTC (Sat) by marcH (subscriber, #57642) [Link]

I think "code churn" is the metric the most relevant for measuring progress here.

> Minix has been developing for a substantial fraction of a human lifetime, which matters a lot to somebody who's hoping to use it for something practical.

Think of what you could leave to your grand-children? And to humanity (I'm half serious).