I was an early Linux user (downloaded Slackware over a slow modem in early 1994) but I installed Minix before that – probably in 1992 or 1993.

While I was reading tonight, I installed Minix 3 with Parallels on my MacBook. The system worked OK, but ran really slowly (over 5 seconds to start Emacs). I have seen a few blogs lately on Minix 3 and I decided to install it, and it was fun to kick the tires for 20 minutes. I like the idea of Minix (an operating system simple enough for a hobbyist to understand) but the slow performance convinced me to delete the Parallels disk image for it. I don’t know why it ran so slowly since Windows 2000 and Ubuntu Linux run very well under Parallels.