[nycbug-talk] Minix 3.2 now with more NetBSD

[Andy Kosela]

On Wed, Feb 29, 2012 at 4:57 PM, Mark Saad <mark.saad at ymail.com> wrote:
> All
>  I believe this is on slashdot , in any case this is quite interesting
> . Minix 3.2 dumped and replaced a bunch of their code for
> direct ports of netbsd code, and switched to use clang.   I didnt know
> anyone even looked at minix in the last few years .
>
>
> http://wiki.minix3.org/en/MinixReleases
> https://groups.google.com/group/minix3/browse_thread/thread/2d9beab6384c4dab?pli=1

Just in case noone has looked through Minix source code in the last
few years, Minix 3 has been greatly rewritten in 2005 with the goals
to become a serious, production quality UNIX-like operating system
with the emphasis on simplicity, reliability and code quality --
things some of us are really missing in today's complex, bloated
software world.

Its architecture is designed around a microkernel (which is less than
4000 lines of code) and multiple isolated servers running in
userspace.  Due to its unique design the system is completely
self-healing and fault-tolerant.  Andrew Tanenbaum has the excellent
video presentation about its features:

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bx3KuE7UjGA

With the complete adoption of NetBSD userland and pkgsrc, Minix is
becoming more and more BSD-like and is gaining attention from BSD
community of developers.  We have still a long way to go though.  Many
userland utilities still need to be ported to the main Minix src tree
and there is a great need for people who would offer their help in
porting.  I will be porting some essential NetBSD utilities and if you
feel like contributing to the Project, then you're welcome to help.
Let's make Minix a truly *BSD system.

--Andy