The European Research Council has granted €2.5 million (around US$3.3 million) to a Dutch university for its research on a “more reliable and secure” Unix-type operating system. The research team seeks to top today’s popular operating systems in the market, such as Windows and Linux, particularly in security features.
According to Andrew S. Tanenbaum, a Computer Science Professor at Vrije Universiteit in the Netherlands, the grant will fund Minix, an operating system that is partly based on Unix. This particular operating system features minimal code base and strong security controls. Specifically, researchers hope to make the operating system capable of fixing itself whenever bugs are detected. In turn, this capabiliy makes the system less prone to system crashes.
“It irritates me to no end when software doesn’t work,” Tanenbaum said. “Having to reboot your computer is just a pain. The question is ‘Can you make a system that actually works very well?’”
Minix has two previous versions that were only intended as teaching tools, and the first version was released in 1987 as a lighter UNIX clone. However, the newest version is now being developed as “a serious system on resource-limited and embedded computers and for applications requiring high reliability,” according to Minix’s documentation.
Focusing on computers with limited resources, Minix 3 is seen as the ideal operating system for laptops that have very low RAM or require minimal power, such as OLPC laptops, cameras and cell phones, and computers for classroom teaching purposes.
What separates Minix 3 in reliability is the idea of using a “microkernel” that does not require the installation of peripheral components inside an operating system’s kernel. Operating applications outside the system’s kernel prevents the entire system from crashing or hanging whenever something goes wrong with the external components. Moreover, components of the operating system will operate as separate modules, a design approach that prevents one malfunctioning component from bringing down other modules - or the whole OS itself.
In effect, an OS that allows separate components to run almost independently leaves vendors to become more accountable for their own software vulnerabilities.
Minix started as a research project funded by Google during one of its Summer of Code programs. Minix 3 runs on computers with Pentium 386 or 486 processors and 16MB or RAM, and a minimum or 50MB disk space. Minix is licensed under the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD) license.
