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Experiences with the Amoeba Distributed Operating System

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Abstract

The Amoeba distributed operating system has been in development and use for over eight years now. In this paper we describe the present system and our experience with it what we did right, but also what we did wrong. Among the things done right were basing the system on objects, using a single uniform mechanism (capabilities) for naming and protecting them in a location independent way, and designing a completely new, and very fast file system. Among the things done wrong were having threads not be pre-emptable, initially building our own homebrew window system, and not having a multicast facility at the outset.

A. S. Tanenbaum, R. van Renesse, H. van Staveren, G. J. Sharp, S. J. Mullender, J. Jansen and G. van Rossum, Experiences with the Amoeba distributed operating system. Communications of the ACM 33, 12 (December 1990), 46–63.

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Authors
  1. Andrew S. Tanenbaum
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  2. Robbert Van Renesse
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  3. Hans Van Staveren
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  4. Gregory J. Sharp
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  5. Sape J. Mullender
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  6. Jack Jansen
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  7. Guido Van Rossum
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Center for Science and Technology, Syracuse University, 13244, Syracuse, NY, USA

    Per Brinch Hansen

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© 2001 Springer Science+Business Media New York

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Tanenbaum, A.S. et al. (2001). Experiences with the Amoeba Distributed Operating System. In: Hansen, P.B. (eds) Classic Operating Systems. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-3510-9_25

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-3510-9_25

  • Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-4419-2881-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4757-3510-9

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