About the Mimix Operating System
What is Mimix?
Mimix is an Open Source operating system emulator licensed under the GNU GPL that runs on Windows
(win32 console) and Linux systems. Mimix runs on top of a virtual machine that acts as the bare
hardware of a computer. The Mimix kernel communicates with the vm through shared memory pipes
that it treats as the pci bus of the system. Mimix is intended for a few different purposes.
First of all it could be encorporated into an Operating Systems class as an example of the "real
world" use of any algorithms students learn. Since Mimix is only an emulator it is not bogged
down by large amounts of complex code like a real OS is. Most of the code in the Mimix kernel is
devoted to the high level algorithms used to make the OS tick. Mimix can also be used by anyone
who is interested in OS development but isn't up to tinkering in the Linux kernel.
On top of that Mimix has yet another advantage. It was Linus Torvalds himself that wrote the
following when he first released Linux:
"Do you pine for the nice days of Minix 1.1, when men were men and wrote their own device drivers?
Are you without a nice project and just dying to cut your teeth on an OS you can try to modify for
your needs? Are you finding it frustrating when everything works on Minix?...Then this post might be
for you."
Well now it is Linux that has grown up and became a better Minix than Minix. While one of the goals
for Mimix isn't to become a better Linux than Linux, Mimix does carry the advantage of
being infant. Anyone who might want to pick up Mimix and make it into something they like can!
Like Linux, Mimix is Open Source and all of the sources to Mimix are free for you to use.
What does 'Mimix' mean?
Titles that are plays on words tend to be quite popular in the Open Source/Linux industry
(GNU's copyleft, etc.) and Mimix isn't much different. The intent of Linux was to be a better
Minix and it was built with a similar design and goals. While Mimix is only an emulator it
attempts to mimic Linux (and in turn Minix) and so is called Mimix because it mimics Linux.