Super short review: Minix 3

The world of the UNIX system is very wide.
There are many different flavours. Linux is just one of them. Honestly, though, it is the most popular and the most widely used.
What is next? Probably BSD and its variations: FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD and their derivatives.
Can you name any current UNIX operating systems?
AIX? SCO-UNIX? HP-UX? These are UNIX-like operating systems from corporate monsters like IBM and Hewlett-Packard.

Anything else? Let me help you: Minix. This is a Unix-based community-driven free (as beer and as freedom) operating system targeted to low-end laptops, embedded systems and alike.
The Minix project is not new. In fact, the current system version is Minix 3. The latest stable version is Minix 3.1.8. But Minix 1 and 2 were considered as experimental and training ones. Now they take things seriously.
How serious are they? That was a question I wanted answered.
You can download Minix 3 as a bz2 archived ISO image. The archive itself is only 288 Mb, and the unpacked image is 385 Mb. Rather a small distribution, and it justifies its name.
I tried to "burn" the ISO image to USB stick using Unetbootin, but without much luck. Obviously, Minix 3 is not supported by this useful tool. Then I burnt the ISO image to DVD-RW disk.
So, the disk is in the optical drive of my Fujitsu-Siemens Amilo Pi 1505 laptop. Reboot. Choose to boot from DVD. Let's go!

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If you think that I will start a long review here, you are terribly wrong. For one very simple question. Minix 3 did not boot. At all! The only thing I saw on the screen was a blinking cursor in the top left corner.
I tried same disk on another laptop, Toshiba L500-19X. Same result. That's all.
Yes, that's all. As promised in the title, the review is super short. Nothing to talk about.

My previous shortest review was about BerliOS operating system. This review beats the BerliOS. But that's life.
Is it only me? Maybe Because there are other people who saw Minix 3 working.
If you have your own experience with Minix 3 Operating System, please share in comments below.

Whereupon Goodbye. See you next time! Stay connected!

DarkDuck

This post was edited by djohnston.