www.minix3.org

Has anybody tried it?

I think Linus Torvalds tried an earlier version.

I tried it in a virtual machine, but I couldn't get it to see the hard drive. Then again, I didn't try very hard.

Minix is a wonderful learning tool. I used the earlier version years ago, and played around with version 3 when it came out. If you are not trying to learn how to program I would stay with Linux. I should revise that to stay EVEN if you are trying to learn how to program stay with Linux; unless of course you are taking an operating systems course from Dr. Tanenbaum.

I installed it a year or so ago. It installed easy and worked fine. It is a very basic Unix operating system. It corresponds to installing a Linux kernel using busybox.

The minix3 project wanted money for the source code so I never took minix any further than installing it, going through the commands, and then installing something else over it.

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Steve Stites

Thanks everybody.

I was thinking to use it as a lightweight platform to run X apps remotely.

I have always run commercial Unix at work, since 1984 (version 7 then BSD 4.x then System V).

At home, I first run Minix on a 8086 PC and later an Atari ST in the late eighties. That was fun. A really tiny community compared to the current state of home unix-like users.

I switched from Minix to Linux in the mid nineties when Linux started to be somewhat stable while commercial Unixes were too expensive for individuals.

I have mostly switched from Linux to Solaris then OpenSolaris based distributions, but of course I keep an eye on other O/Ses.

I wouldn't use Minix as a lightweight platform to run X apps remotely. It is currently back again more an experimental O/S interesting for kernel internals study. It is reviving from near death experience now its licensing model is "more free": Minix 3 source code is no more subject to any charge and is freely downloadable from http://www.minix3.org/source.html

I tried it for an afternoon. The overhead of getting real world applications to run is not worth your time in comparison to just running a matured lightweight Linux distro.

Unless you ask Tanenbaum's people, I don't think MINIX is meant to be used, though. it's only valuable if you are learning about operating systems. Check out Tanenbaum's canonical OS text: "Operating Systems: Design and Implementation" (Pearson)

Thanks again.

Maybe I'll try it for fun then.