Minix1 Home (formerly Minix1.hampshire.edu) Since 1996! modified: 7 Sept 2006

For MINIX 3 go to http://www.minix3.org. (Minix 3 released Oct 2005)

Important note: please read the page describing changes to this site.

Minix1 Home Page

Minix is open source. The Minix license changed in April 2000, and applies retroactively to all previous Minix distributions, even though they still carry the old, more restrictive license within. See the Minix license-to-use in the file LICENSE. (Translation in normal language: Redistribution allowed. Keep the Copyright notice. Don't hide the Copyright notice. Don't say we endorse what you do with it. Don't blame us if it blows up in your face.)

Minix 2.0 is available for other architectures, including Sun SPARC, and can be run under an emulator (Bochs, Qemu) or a virtualizer (VMWare, Virtual PC) on many platforms, including Unix, Linux, Microsoft Windows, and MacIntosh OS.

Older versions of Minix for other architectures, including MacIntosh, are available.

On this site you can find:

• The Minix 2 Hints/FAQ Page, with pointers to FAQs and lots of information about Minix.
• The Minix Public Download directories, from which Minix and contributed software can be downloaded.
• Minix documentation: manual pages and pointers to other documentation.
• The Teaching with Minix Howto: information and links regarding using Minix in teaching.

Some other features are:

• News about Minix and this site (updated Sept 7 2006).
• What's new? Most recently modified web pages
• Browse descriptions of items in the contributed software directory.
• Minix contributions and uploads: what's here and how to contribute.
• Bug lists and fixes for Minix 2: 2.0.0 (OSDI/2e CD-ROM), version 2.0.2, version 2.0.3, version 2.0.4.

inix websites:

• This is Al Woodhull's Minix1 site at Hampshire College, or its mirror site at the University of Massachusetts, both in Amherst, Massachusetts, USA.
• The official Minix Home Page is maintained by Andy Tanenbaum at the Vrije Universiteit, in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. It has pointers to information on all Minix versions.
• The main FTP site for distribution of current versions of Minix for all architectures is at the Vrije Universiteit, ftp.cs.vu.nl or http://www.cs.vu.nl/pub/minix/.
• The cs.vu site is mirrored in Australia at http://planetmirror.com/pub/minix/.
• If you are interested in older versions of Minix for Intel processors, the source code for versions back to version 1.5 is available at Kees Bot's Minix-vmd site.

Other Minix resources on the net are:

• There are a comp.os.minix usenet newsgroup and a Minix-l mailing list. There are searchable archives of both on the web. Click here for more information.
• The Minix on the Net site has pointers to many Minix sites.
• There is a web site specializing in info about Minix for the MacIntosh: MacMinix (maintained by Bradley Pliner).
• Michael Temari developed many network applications for Minix. They can be found at his home site in http://TemWare.com/files as well as here.
• Claudio Tantignone's PPP and other contributions may be found at http://www.geocities.com/ctantignone. Copies of many of Claudio's contributions can also be found here.
• There are other sites with collections of Minix software. One worthy of note is Terry McConnell's ftp site with ports of various GNU tools for Minix 2.0. (That is an ftp link, it shows full file info, but the http link to Terry's site has more up-to-date info about some items.)

inix1.hampshire.edu and minix1.bio.umass.edu anonymous ftp access has been discontinued as of February 2005 because of security concerns -- the Internet is not as friendly a place as it once was. All files that were once accessible by ftp://-type URLs should be accessible simply by changing the protocol specifier of the URL to http://. I intend to edit all affected URLs on these pages, but I may have missed some. Feedback is welcomed, please contact ASW if you find a URL that is incorrect or if you can't access any file. See the bottom of this page for e-mail information.

There is a complete and current (updated daily) directory listing of the files in the public download (formerly /ftp/pub/) area. You can browse descriptive text files about contributed programs. This is also updated daily.

Our contributed software site is experimental and is not intended to be a major software repository, the selection is small and idiosyncratic. However, the site is available to any Minix user who would like to make a preliminary distribution of work in progress. Click here for information on how to submit a contribution.

Minix1.hampshire.edu is also the home site for the Minix Networking Software that supports http, ftp, telnet, rlogin, mail, and other network applications. Some of this is experimental, and not yet available in the standard Minix distribution. The developer of most of the network software available here is Michael Temari.

The major job of upgrading Minix to version 2.0 and beyond is being done by Kees Bot (kjb@cs.vu.nl). Kees and Philip Homburg (philip@cs.vu.nl) are also the creators of Minix-vmd, an enhanced Minix for 80386 and later processors that implements virtual memory and supports X11.

inix was originally developed by Andrew Tanenbaum, ast@cs.vu.nl, as a tool for teaching operating systems principles. Minix release 2.0.0 is described in detail in the text Operating Systems Design and Implementation, 2nd edition, by Tanenbaum and Woodhull, published in 1997 by Prentice-Hall. Minix 2.0.0 is included on a CD-ROM with the book. This reference is a copy of the original Prentice-Hall website created when the book was published in 1997. Since then Prentice-Hall (now a division of Pearson) has posted a new OSDI/2e website.

The book has been published in a number of translations, including Spanish, Portuguese, and Japanese. (I'd like to know of others -- foreign publishers don't always send courtesy copies of translated works to the original authors!)

inix1 URLs referencing minix1.hampshire.edu or minix1.bio.umass.edu will work equivalently. Changes made to one site are usually mirrored on the other site almost immediately. The Hampshire site is hosted at the School of Natural Science at Hampshire College and the UMass site is located at Al's workplace in the Department of Biology, School of Natural Science and Mathematics, University of Massachusetts. Both are located in Amherst, MA, USA. Click here if you would like some technical information about minix1.hampshire.edu or minix1.bio.umass.edu.

Although Hampshire College gets internet access via the University of Massachusetts, it also has an independent connection to the Internet. So the relative effects of network congestion on the two sites are hard to predict. If you have difficulty with one, try the other. The hardware at the two sites is not identical, but the differences are probably not significant for function as a server.

Click here to visit Al's personal home page.

Here is my wishlist page: things I would like to see added to Minix or this web page.

For questions or suggestions contact Al Woodhull by e-mail: Mail to Al Woodhull

Thanks to Glen Overby for the Minix logo!