Microwindows for Minix

modified: Oct 27 2002

The Microwindows project is described in the readme.txt file at http://microwindows.org thus:

Microwindows is an Open Source project aimed at bringing the features of modern graphical windowing environments to smaller devices. Microwindows' genesis was with the NanoGUI project, and is now the primary distribution for both the Microwindows and Nano-X codebase. Microwindows currently runs on Linux, RTEMS, ELKS, MSDOS and bare VGA hardware. It uses the same device-independent graphics engine originally built for the NanoGUI project. Microwindows compiles a sample application and the win32 graphics api in about 42k.

As of this writing a complete port of microwindows to Minix has not been accomplished. Michael Temari, author of many Minix goodies, has worked on a port to Minix, and Kees Bot has added code to Minix 2.0.3 to support this effort. On 24 May 2002 Michael posted the following note on the comp.os.minix newsgroup (slightly edited by asw):

> Other things have come up and I have not had any more time to work on 
> [microwindows] and finish it up.

> If you load microwindows onto your Minix 2.0.3 from
>   ftp://microwindows.org/pub/microwindows/microwindows-0.89pre8.tar.gz
> then in the Microwindows src directory you untar
>   http://minix1.bio.umass.edu/pub/contrib/microwmx.tar.Z [see note below]
> it will give you all the Minix makefiles and other files needed to make
> Microwindows on Minix.

> The makefiles are called Makefile.minix so to use them you type: make -f
> Makefile.minix
> This is as far as I got.  To compile everything - from the src directory
> type: make -f Makefile.minix
> This should get you close to a working microwindows on Minix.

As microwindows for Minix is very much a work-in-progress it is suggested that you go to the Google Minix archive at http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&group=comp.os.minix or the Minix-l mailing list archive at http://listserv.nodak.edu/archives/minix-l.html and search for articles referencing microwindows to see if more recent work has been done.

Note: in the original post Michael referred to the tarfile he posted as http://minix1.bio.umass.edu/mf.tar.(*) The contents of that file have been supplemented with this text, retarred, compressed, and moved to http://minix1.bio.umass.edu/pub/contrib/microwmx.tar.Z, in the interest of keeping the website rationally organized and making these files easier to find. A description is available in http://minix1.bio.umass.edu/pub/contrib/microwmx.txt.

(*) For any URL containing minix1.bio.umass.edu you may substitute the address of the mirror site, minix1.hampshire.edu.

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