Today I decided to do something a bit crazy: I installed MINIX 3.3.0, a Unix-like operating system from 2014, in VMware on my Debian machine.
I had just started reading The C Programming Language (K&R) and wanted to get into the right mindset — one that’s closer to how the book was originally written. So I downloaded the ISO, created a virtual machine, and went through the full installation process from the live CD. It was all text-based, a bit quirky, and took some troubleshooting (especially with networking and keyboard issues), but I eventually got it working.
I logged in as root, set up DHCP networking, updated the package list with pkgin, and installed tools like vim, wget, curl, and htop. I even created my first file with vim (test.txt), compiled a simple C program (hello.c), and ran it successfully.
While MINIX itself is quite minimal and the GUI packages aren’t easily available anymore, the whole experience reminded me why this OS was created — as a clean, educational microkernel system for learning operating systems and low-level programming.
I’ll continue most of my actual K&R study on my main Debian system with VSCode, but installing MINIX gave me a deeper appreciation for the fundamentals. Sometimes you have to go back to the classics to move forward.
Has anyone else tried running old teaching OSes in 2026 for fun or learning? Would love to hear your thoughts!