Minix Operating System

What if I say that there is an operating system which is just 4,000 lines long in code. Anybody will be surprised . I was awestruck. But Minix claims to be just that.

I recently learned Visual Studio 2005 which is a very fantastic IDE. You can cook up a full fledged application in minutes . But what I noticed was the code bloat . The IDE generated around 500 lines of code for a simple database application. Contrast that with the Minix .

Minix is an open source operating system which is as reliable and secure as its grand pa Linux. Although Minix 1 and Minix 2 were supposed to be used mainly for teaching purpose, with version 3 Minix has become a full-fledged operating system. Well, the entire operating system is bigger than 4,000 lines, its kernel which is the core part of the OS is. Which is not a small accomplishment in itself.

Minix operating system has a unique feature that allows you to update the device drivers without requiring a reboot. The operating system is written in C and the full source code is down loadable from the site. Minix OS is primarily targeted at embedded systems and systems with low resources. Minix can be run off a live CD and is available for virtualization softwares like Microsoft Virtual PC and VMWare.

More Information

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Funny Side of Linux
History of Linux