Difference between AIX and MINIX 3

Last Updated : 27 Jul, 2020

1. AIX :
AIX is a series of proprietary operating systems which is provided by IBM. AIX stands for Advanced Interactive eXecutive. Initially it was designed for the IBM RT PC RISC workstation and later it was used for various hardware platforms like IBM RS/6000 series, PowerPC-based systems, System-370 mainframes, PS-2 personal computers and Apple Network Server. It is one of the five commercial operating systems that have versions certified to UNIX 03 standard of The Open Group. The first version of AIX was launched in 1986. The latest stable version of AIX is 7.2.

2. MINIX 3 :
MINIX 3 is a free and open source operating system which was developed by Andrew S. Tanenbaum. It is published under the Berkeley Software Distribution license. It is an Unix-like operating systems. It is specially designed for workstations. It is derived from MINIX 1 and MINIX 2 operating systems. It is basically written using C language and assembly language. The first version of MINIX 3 was launched in 2005. The kernel used in this operating system is microkernel.

Difference between AIX and MINIX 3 :

AIX	MINIX 3
It was developed and is owned by IBM.	It was developed by Andrew S. Tanenbaum.
It was launched in 1986.	It was launched in 2005.
Its target system type is Server, NAS and workstation.	Its target system types are workstations.
Computer architectures supported are POWER, PowerPC-AS, PowerPC and Power ISA.	Computer architectures supported by MINIX 3 is IA-32.
Kernel type is Monolithic with modules.	Its kernel type is Microkernel.
The native APIs are SysV/POSIX.	Its native APIs are POSIX.
Preferred license is Proprietary.	It has the preferred license of BSD.
Update management is Service Update Management Assistant (SUMA).	Update management is Windows Update.
The non-native APIs supported through its subsystems are DOS API, Win16, POSIX and .NET.	The non-native APIs are not supported through its subsystems.
File systems supported are JFS, JFS2, ISO 9660, UDF, NFS, SMBFS and GPFS.	File systems supported are NTFS, FAT, ISO 9660.