minix

Minix is basically ABI compatible with NetBSD, so going from a Debian/kNetBSD port to Minix would be easy.

It really depends on your goals - if you just want to learn, then Minix is pretty good.

There could have been so many other ways to go: smalltalk machines, Lisp machines, Minix vs Linux, etc...

I am not complaining as I find Minix great, just making the point that nothing is really free.

There's no way Minix 3 will trump QNX with such small resources and I doubt they planned to.

Andrew S Tanenbaum, of Minix fame, was working on Amoeba at the same time, which also was designed to present network transparency to the end user.

Like Tanenbaum said in his paper, Minix 3 has had a small amount of core developers working on it for a relatively short amount of time.

I looked at the Linux one, some from BSD, but settled on the Minix code: it was a lot simpler and easier to understand.

Doesn't Minix 3 have pkgsrc from NetBSD available?

These days you're better off with Minix 3.

I was trying to install minix 3.3 for fun and ran into a bug in the e1000 driver that caused VirtualBox to throw up.

I'd probably include microkernels like Minix 3 as well.

'slightly' easier:) edit: and this is with complete s/w "stack" as well, including ansi-c compiler, multi-user port of minix-2, tcp/ip stack...

Minix 3 is nicely doing the self-healing thing.

The other option is the perennial favorite, Minix, but I've realized about computing is that there are a lot of thoughts on how to do things correctly and seeing only one way may make you blind.