# Minix 15 Hacker News commenters recommended Minix and 9 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 7 of 13 months; owners who said how long report a median of 35 years (3 owners). **Verdict:** Free microkernel Unix-like system praised for isolated drivers and teaching OS design; critics call it a toy that lacks parts for a working system. ## Why people recommend it - Teaching operating system design (5 comments): "Minix is still used at universities as an educational tool for teaching operating system design" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47660830)) "It worked very well for the goal of teaching student the basics of operating systems." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47023582)) "I strongly suspect an undergraduate minix course taught at VU would be very good." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47024943)) - Fault isolation and driver recovery (3 comments): "The point is that when failures do occur, they can be isolated and recovered from without compromising system stability." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45790084)) "Minix had a smaller attack surface and isolation provided by its microkernel vs. Linux's monolithic kernel." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47836172)) "the microkernel architecture. If a driver dies, it gets "resurrected", and so forth." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45789438)) - Unix-compatible microkernel design (2 comments): "At least MINIX is nominally UNIX/POSIX/C more or less and is somewhat related to ye olde UNIX design" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48131669)) "Minix 3 is a true microkernel Unix-compatible: it can run most of the NetBSD userland" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48937623)) ## What people warn about - Costly and restricted distribution (4 comments): "his chosen strategy would make Minix effectively unaffordable to me in spite of his stated goal" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47022783)) "you had to pay a fairly ridiculous amount of money for if you were a student there" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47019938)) "The book publisher is blamed for preventing Minix from being freely distributed" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47020408)) - Toy, not for real work (3 comments): "to purposefully use a toy when the real thing is freely available" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47025578)) "a toy for students, not for real work" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45963329)) "a toy OS for university teachings" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48472629)) - Missing parts of a working system (3 comments): "It turned out that this version only covers a fraction of the relevant parts necessary to build a working system." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49072136)) "it is not as lean as presented in the book but actually depends on hundereds of assembler files" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47020214)) "a lot of interesting stuff was left out" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47025833)) - Broke compatibility and weak performance (3 comments): "MINIX3 just broken all backward compatibility by increasing the size of directory entries" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47027145)) "It had to make a copy of the whole address space on fork." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47295822)) "But you couldn't do shit with it, on most hardware." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49415589)) ## Alternatives hackers recommend - [webOS](https://hackerapproved.com/p/webos.md): 20 recommend - [AsteroidOS](https://hackerapproved.com/p/asteroidos-2-0.md): 19 recommend - [Inferno operating system](https://hackerapproved.com/p/inferno.md): 12 recommend - [Visopsys](https://hackerapproved.com/p/visopsys.md): 9 recommend - [DragonFly BSD](https://hackerapproved.com/p/dragonflybsd.md): 7 recommend ## Cite as Hacker Approved, "Minix", https://hackerapproved.com/p/minix/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).