Al's Minix Wish List

modified: 29 Jun 2005

Minix add-ons or improvements I'd like to see

• More ethernet drivers. There are too many newer cards that are not compatible with the old cards supported by Minix. Specifically needed is a driver for the emulated DEC 21140 ethernet interface that Virtual PC presents to guest systems.
• Servers for secure services, especially ssh and scp. Telnet and ftp transmit unencrypted passwords and this is not acceptable in many environments.
• USB interface support.
• Text-mode mouse input for cut and paste, like the gpm daemon for text-mode Linux.
• Some kind of graphic interface with mouse support. Not necessarily a complete multi-window system, but able to display and navigate web pages.
• Server-side include capability for the http server.
• Better network route control (del_route doesn't work, add_route doesn't detect redefined routes).
• I'm an amateur radio operator (see my ham radio page) and I have often thought Minix could offer a lot to hams, who traditionally are resourceful and interested in getting new life out of old equipment. There is a lot of ham radio software that could be ported to Minix, ranging from Morse code teaching programs to the KA9Q NOS networking stack.

Things to add to the web page:

• Search capability.
• Programming tutorial.
• Debugging tutorial.
• Porting tutorial (how to get a big app running on Minix).
• What's new page: Done! See lists of files modified in last 7 days in the web pages and the download directories.