Andrew S. Tanenbaum

Andrew S. Tanenbaum (born 1944) is the head of Department of Computer Systems, Vrije Universiteit[?], Amsterdam. He teaches courses about Computer Organization and Operating Systems.

He is well recognized for his computer books, especially

• Computer Networks, ISBN 0130661023
• Operating Systems: Design and Implementation, ISBN 0136386776
• Modern Operating Systems, ISBN 0130313580

He has written Minix, a free UNIX clone, which was the inspiration for the Linux operating system. He became involved in a famous Usenet discussion in 1992 with Linus Torvalds, Linux's creator, about the merits of Linus's basic approach using a monolithic kernel instead of the microkernel-based designs that Tanenbaum believed were the way of the future.

External Links

• Personal Website (http://www.cs.vu.nl/~ast/)
• Dept. of Computer Systems at VU (http://www.cs.vu.nl/cs/index-en.html)
• The Usenet discussion with Torvalds at Google Groups (http://groups.google.com/groups?threadm=12595%40star.cs.vu.nl)