www:documentation:features
Table of Contents
Here are some of the more interesting features of MINIX 3.
General Characteristics
- POSIX-compliant operating system with a NetBSD userland
- Open source, with a BSD license
- Runs on x86 PCs and well as x86 virtual machines (VMware, etc.)
- Runs on ARM Cortex A8 (e.g., BeagleBoard XM, Beaglebones)
- Networking with TCP/IP
- Virtual memory
- Virtual file system
- Unified block cache shared by virtual memory and file systems
- Dynamic linking
- Small memory footprint (kernel is 600 kB; full OS is 25 MB)
MINIX-specific Features
- Tiny microkernel that runs in kernel mode
- Most of the operating system runs in user-mode protected processes
- Each device driver is a separate user-mode process
- Reincarnation server can reload failed drivers
Reliability Features
- Reduced kernel size
- Bugs are caged
- Drivers' memory access is limited
- Bad pointer references are not always fatal
- Infinite loops are not always fatal
- Buffer overruns are not always fatal
- Access to kernel function calls is restricted
- Access to I/O ports is restricted
- Communication with OS components is restricted
- Dead or sick drivers can be reincarnated
- Interrupts and messages are integrated
- Click here for more details
Languages and Compilers
- Languages: C, C++, clisp, mawk, Perl, Python, tcl, etc.
- Compilers: gcc and clang/LLVM
- Native compilation (self hosting) on x86
- Cross compilation for x86 and ARM
Packages
- Shells (e.g., bash, mksh, mudsh, pdksh, zsh)
- Editors (e.g., elvis, joe, jove, pico, uemacs, vim)
- Games (e.g., crafty, exchess, ioquake)
- Mail (e.g., fetchmail, getmail, mutt, thunderbird)
- Over 4000 other NetBSD packages
www/documentation/features.txt · Last modified: 2015/07/19 14:17 by dcvmoole
