MINIX 3 is a free software operating system designed to be highly reliable, flexible, and secure. It is loosely based somewhat on previous versions of MINIX, but is fundamentally different in many key ways.

MINIX has traditionally been an operating system with an eye toward education. Both versions 1 and 2 of the MINIX system were designed to be useful for students learning about operating systems. The code behind MINIX was small and clean, making it a practical study tool in this complex field.

I saw an article the other day, repeating the mistaken view that there was Minix code in an early version of Linux. I knew that was not true, because for one thing Linus told us it was not true years ago. And Andrew Tanenbaum confirmed that Linus didn't use any Minix code, as did Eric Raymond.

This is where Linux started. Minix, from the bible on operating systems. You can easily install it on minivMac for your iPod, download it from this link and install the disk image in your iPod as usual. Then, unpack the files inside.

Linux (pronunced: /ˈlɪnʊks/, lin-uks) is an operating system that was initially created as a hobby by a young student, Linus Torvalds, at the University of Helsinki in Finland. Linus had an interest in Minix, a small UNIX system, and decided to develop a system that exceeded the Minix standards. He began his work in 1991 when he released version 0.02 and worked steadily until 1994 when version 1.0 of the Linux Kernel was released.

“A couple of years ago this guy called Ken Brown wrote a book saying that Linus stole Linux from me… It later came out that Microsoft had paid him to do this…”

–Andrew S Tanenbaum, father on MINIX

I recently had the opportunity to interview Andrew S. Tanenbaum, creator of the extremely secure Unix-like operating sytem MINIX 3. Andrew is also the author of Operating Systems Design and Implementation, the must-have book on programming and designing operating systems, and the man whose work inspired Linus Torvalds to create Linux.

This is not exactly news but here's a nice tutorial on installing Debian GNU/kfreebsd in QEMU. Finally you can reply to questions like "Do you run linux?" with a proud "No, I run debian" :-) I'm still waiting for the day I can "apt-get install freebsd-image" to replace only the kernel and run my userland with freebsd's linux syscall support.

As you may already know, managing software in Debian is done through tools like Synaptic and apt-get. These are called packages and are (mostly) freely available on the internet. Linux software packages are held on online libraries called repositories.