BSD

Linux

Minix

GNU/Hurd

Plan 9

Solaris

OpenVMS

OS X

AIX

HP-UX

Windows

Minix is a Unix-Like operating system based on a microkernel architecture that was first released in 1987. Since April of 2000 it is released under a BSD license. It was developed by Andrew Tanenbaum at Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam to be used as a teaching aid.



The current developement project of Minix is Minix 3 and can be found at http://www.minix3.org. The addition of x11 in Minix 3 may help spread the use of minix beyond its current level.

Minix boasts its modularization in this excerpt from http://www.minix3.org

        "This new OS is extremely small, with the part that runs in kernel mode under 6000 lines of executable code. The parts that run in user mode are divided into small modules, well insulated from one another. For example, each device driver runs as a separate user-mode process so a bug in a driver (by far the biggest source of bugs in any operating system), cannot bring down the entire OS. In fact, most of the time when a driver crashes it is automatically replaced without requiring any user intervention, without requiring rebooting, and without affecting running programs. These features, the tiny amount of kernel code, and other aspects greatly enhance system reliability."