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Recently I have become curious about the Minix OS. http://www.minix3.org/

I am very taken with descriptions of its robustness & reliability features, but I have noticed a distinct paucity of software packages available for the platform.

Has anybody here developed software for (or ported software to) Minix? Anything unexpected about the process?

A: 

Minix is very minimal, as the linux kernel was a fork of minix. As most of the free software developers develop for the linux system. So there are going to be very few tools that are developed specifically to run on minix.

Milhous
Linux was _not_ a fork of Minix. Minix was used to bootstrap the original Linux kernels, but there has never been any Minix code in Linux.
Alnitak
+2  A: 

Minix 3 is a new version; LINUX was prompted on the original Minix.

Minix is really best suited to small systems of embedded systems. If you have an old x86 PC around it should run minix handily, giving you an environment very much like what we called "an amazing workstation" in the mid-80's.

I loved programming in that environment; I'd say go for it, but remember that it is an experimenal environment, not what you want for your day-to-day system.

Charlie Martin