MiNT

From WE Computers Museum
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MiNT
Developer Eric Smith and the FreeMiNT team
Publisher https://github.com/freemint/freemint
Platforms Atari ST, Atari Falcon
Released MiNT: May 1990 - 1993
FreeMiNT: June 1993 - present
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MiNT is an open source operating system for the Atari ST line of computers that is an alternative to The Operating System, or TOS.

MiNT is Not TOS

Eric Smith began development on MiNT in 1989 after attempting to port the GNU libraries to TOS for Atari ST. MiNT was originally created as a TOS extension to add a Unix-like layer to TOS to ease the porting process.

MiNT was originally released as "MiNT is Not TOS" in May 1990. As MiNT increased in popularity, developers added code to the software, including a port of the multi-threaded MINIX file system.

MiNT is Now TOS

Atari sought to add multitasking abilities to its TOS, and because MiNT facilitated that, Atari hired Eric Smith and MiNT was rebranded as "MiNT is Now TOS". MiNT became an official alternative operating system with the release of the Atari Falcon in 1992.

FreeMiNT

In 1993, Atari discontinued the Atari ST line and left the computer market. Development of the MiNT source code was continued in June 1993 by a team of volunteers as FreeMiNT.