UNIXlíkan

UNIXlíkan is a family of UNIX-like operating systems that aims to reflect the traditional UNIX design philosophy of simple, composable tools, clear interfaces, and predictable behavior. It emphasizes portability across architectures and a POSIX-compliant userland, while maintaining a straightforward development model and a focus on stability.

The project originated in 2012 as an academic and hobbyist effort by a group of developers and researchers. The first stable release followed a few years later, and the ecosystem has evolved through community contributions. It is released under a permissive license and is governed by a collaborative, merit-based process that invites involvement from individuals and organizations.

Design and architecture: UNIXlíkan uses a modular monolithic kernel with loadable modules to support drivers and subsystems. The userland centers on a POSIX-compatible C library and a curated set of traditional tools with consistent interfaces. An init-style supervisor manages services with emphasis on parallel startup and reliability. Security features include privilege separation, sandboxing, and features designed to reduce surface area for potential exploits.

Package management and ecosystem: UNIXlíkan provides a two-tier distribution model with binary packages and source ports. Core utilities and libraries are distributed with signed manifests, and updates follow a defined release track or rolling-release option depending on the build variant. The project emphasizes portability, with support for multiple filesystem types and standard tooling common to UNIX-like systems.

Platforms and usage: UNIXlíkan targets x86-64 and ARM64 hardware and supports virtualization and container environments. It has a modest user base in academic, research, and hobbyist contexts and is not widely deployed in large-scale production environments.

See also

- UNIX

- UNIX-like

- POSIX

- Linux

- BSD