A blast from Minix past.

I was trawling through the internet trying to find some information for a future post when I came across this email from none other than Andy Tanenbaum himself. This email was written in 1992 and in it he comments and makes some predictions on Linux. The title of his email is "LINUX is obsolete".

In the beginning he starts out saying "As a result of my occupation, I think I know a bit about where operating are going in the next decade or so." I assume he means operating systems and not medical operations.

He basically covers two points. The first point he discusses the difference between an monolithic and a micro kernel. He insults the Intel CPU here "but only because the brain-dead nature of the Intel CPUs" on no uncertain terms and compares the linux kernel to BASIC and calls it "a truly poor idea" The second point he covers is portability and in it he states that the x86 architecture will not be around for long and will be superseded by the risc architecture.

To top it off he says that "But in all honesty, I would suggest that people who want a **MODERN** "free" OS look around for a microkernel-based, portable OS, like maybe GNU or something like that."

I read that email (the original can be found here and I personally found it very amusing considering where Linux is now. So much so that I had to share it with you all.