Minix

MINIX is a small, Unix-like operating system designed for teaching and research. It was created by Andrew S. Tanenbaum and first released in 1987 at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. The name derives from Mini Unix.

The project has three major revisions: MINIX 1 (the original teaching-oriented system), MINIX 2 (a more complete, modular redesign), and MINIX 3 (a reliability- and security-focused version).

MINIX uses a microkernel-based design in which the kernel provides inter-process communication, scheduling, and memory protection, while drivers, file systems, and other services run as separate user-space processes. This separation improves fault containment because a misbehaving service is less likely to crash the kernel. The system is POSIX-compatible and released under a permissive BSD-like license.

It runs on x86 hardware and has ports to other architectures, including x86-64 and ARM variants, with an emphasis on providing an accessible platform for experimentation, learning, and research.

Impact and usage: MINIX has long served as a widely used teaching tool and influenced the development of later operating systems. Linus Torvalds has cited MINIX as an inspiration for Linux. Today, MINIX remains primarily used in education and research as a compact, well-documented platform for exploring operating-system concepts.