MINIX

MINIX è un sistema operativo simile a UNIX basato sul una architettura a microkernel. E’ estremamente piccolo, con la parte che funziona in kernel mode avente solo 5.000 linee di codice sorgente,mentre la parte in user mode sono divise in piccoli moduli isolati che aumentano la sicurezza del sistema.

Questa nuova versione giunge dopo un anno dalla precedente.

Versione 3.3.0

Questa versione contiene (in Inglese):

• New features

• The first release with ARM support, three Beagle targets ($45 boards with lots of features and power! More info on specs & where to buy on the beagle site) are supported – build a complete SD card image from scratch using just our source tree and a single shell script invocation!
• Experimental USB support for the Beaglebones (hubs & mass storage)
• Crosscompiling for both ARM and x86 – the buildsystem is very portable.
• VND: vnode disk (loopback) block driver
• LLVM Bitcode build of the system
• Import of LLVM / clang in the sources
• unified block cache shared by FSes and VM
• mmap() allowing more sharing and less copying and lower memory footprint – used significantly by exec() and ld.so for all executables and shared libraries

• Improvements

• More complete source compatability with NetBSD in terms of utilities, calls, types (lots of 64-bit), toolchain, codebase and packages. All Minix-specific code is in a top-level minix/ subdir.
• Updated packages overall – a big set is built now
• New input infrastructure: input server and keyboard driver separated from TTY
• Packages are dynamically linked now, so they’re smaller
• Improved driver modularity: UDS separated from PFS; PTY separated from TTY; one controller (not two) per at_wini driver; LOG no longer in the boot image
• The messages have been given a C type per request so all the types are cleaner; and the message size is a bit bigger now so there’s more room for growth with the bigger types

• Known issues

• The isofs dirver has been disabled as it is too buggy. isodir, isoread, isoinfo, writeisofs can be used instead.
• X11 is not available currently. Our old version, which was still based off of a monolithic XFree86 Server, broke. We are in the process of importing a current release of Xorg. New X11 packages will be provided as soon as the port will be completed.
• ARM USB
• Dynamic plugin/unplugin of devices on a USB hub is flaky.

Risorse

La distribuzione può essere scaricata da:

• ISO (288 MB): http://download.minix3.org/iso/minix_R3.3.0-588a35b.iso.bz2
• Torrent: http://download.minix3.org/iso/minix_R3.3.0-588a35b.iso.bz2.torrent

Il sito web della distribuzione è: http://www.minix3.org

Screenshot

MINIX 3.2.1

Conclusioni

Questa versione esce dopo 1 anno e 6 mesi dalla precedente