Not to mention MINIX is hidden away in almost every modern Intel CPU as part of its Management Engine. This little known fact makes it one of the most widely distributed operating systems.
As to why, no idea. I guess some engineer was just familiar with it from their undergrad days like the rest of us.
And which version, I know it’s MINIX 3 but beyond that? No idea. They probably heavily modified it and as Minix is not GPL, Intel never published it. Based on the timelines it’s likely 3.1 as the ME platform has heen around since approximately 2007 iirc.
The original L4 was written in assembler and replaced by different other implementations long before the ME platform was developed. Pistachio was in development around that time and available under BSD.
AIUI Sel4 is just a kernel, so adding all the "management engine crap" - networking stacks, drivers etc. would be a lot of work. Minix came with 'batteries' included.
> Not to mention MINIX is hidden away in almost every modern Intel CPU as part of its Management Engine.
Sometimes I wonder how the world would be today if MINIX was distributed with a FLOSS license similar to Linux. I think the Linus Torvalds vs Andrew Tanenbaum debate could have been a pivotal moment in tech history by the way MINIX missed a huge opportunity to step up in the history.
I'm curious if this is actually true, considering various ARM MCUs and SOCs seem to dominate in quantity. Considering these largely run some sort of Linux or RTOS, I'd be curious to see if MINIX or Linux is more widespread?
