What role Minix played in the creation of Linux?
MINIX originally was developed in 1987 by Andrew S. Tanenbaum as a teaching tool for his textbook Operating Systems Design and Implementation. Today, MINIX is best known as a footnote in GNU/Linux history. It inspired Linus Torvalds to develop Linux, and some of his early work was written on MINIX.
Is NetBSD Linux based?
NetBSD is an open-source operating system. Like Linux, NetBSD aims for broad compatibility with Unix, offering similar utilities and behavior. NetBSD is based on the Berkeley Software Distribution version of Unix, hence the “BSD” in the name.
What is MINIX and why it is created?
Minix (from “mini-Unix”) is a POSIX-compliant (since version 2.0), Unix-like operating system based on a microkernel architecture. Early versions of MINIX were created by Andrew S. Tanenbaum for educational purposes. MINIX is now developed as open-source software.
What is MINIX used for?
MINIX. The Unix-like OS originally developed by Andrew Tanenbaum as an educational tool — to demonstrate operating system programming — is built into every new Intel CPU. MINIX is running on “Ring -3” (that’s “negative 3”) on its own CPU. A CPU that you, the user/owner of the machine, have no access to.
What is the difference between FreeBSD and Linux kernel?
The operating system is technically the kernel itself. FreeBSD is comparable to Linux, the only difference that the system utilities in Linux are on a separate repository called util-linux, while in FreeBSD their source codes come along with the OS (OS=kernel) code in the main repository.
How do ports work in NetBSD and OpenBSD?
Both NetBSD’s pkgsrc (package source) and OpenBSD’s ports collection trace their origins to the FreeBSD ports system. Normally when you install software on a Unix operating system you find and download the software. Then you unpack the software which is typically tarball compressed.
Why is FreeBSD 4 so popular with ISPs?
Around the time of the first dot-com bubble, FreeBSD 4 was extremely popular with ISPs. This may or may not have been related to the addition of kqueue. The Wikipedia page describes the feelings for FreeBSD 4 thusly: “…widely regarded as one of the most stable and high performance operating systems of the whole Unix lineage.”
What are some good resources to learn more about FreeBSD?
I highly recommend Michael W. Lucas book Absolute FreeBSD if you want a more in-depth study of some of the security features FreeBSD provides. However, I can mention a couple of things. During installation of FreeBSD the installer provides a nice set of options you can enable or disable.