MiNT
| |
| 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 |
| Added to Museum |
not yet |
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.
