www:documentation:improvements
MINIX 3 has many improvements over MINIX 2, too many to list. We will just list a few of them here.
New Features
- Installation (based on a live CD) is much simpler
- X Window System
- Memory sizes up to 4 GB are supported
- Disk blocks can be 1-, 2-, 4-, or 8-KB
- The select system call has been added
- Many new programs including gcc, g++, emacs, nvi, vim, bison, python, perl, GNU utilities
- An information server has been added for debugging and other purposes
- A reincarnation server automatically kills and replaces faulty device drivers on the fly
Better System structure
- The kernel has been heavily rewritten, cleaned up, and reduced to under 4000 lines of code
- Each device driver (except the clock) is now a separate user process
- Many new reliability features have been added
- A new nonblocking notification mechanism for IPC has been added
- Timer management has been improved and simplified
- Scheduling has been made more general
- A bit map controls which destinations a process can send to
- A bit map controls which kernel calls drivers and servers can make
- Control of 'superuser-like' powers for kernel calls have been modularized
- Interrupt notification and messages have been integrated
www/documentation/improvements.txt · Last modified: 2014/11/19 18:04 by lionelsambuc
