I remember the 14-character limit from the Xenix system I worked on as a kid. Xenix was one of the reasons I got into Linux in my late teens, and it blew my mind how much more flexible the latter system was, despite being very familiar.
I remember the thrill of multitasking at the command line for the first time with &, blew my mind. :-D
Can’t remember how I obtained Minix before having access to the internet. Maybe downloaded from a BBS? Or possibly an instructor had a copy on floppy.
I do remember that many floppies for Win95 and Slackware, though a few years later.
My PS/2 HDD was only 20MB, and I recall having enough free space after the install. For Minix 1.5, there's another estimate here of 9 DD floppies -- 6.5MB compressed. That seems about right.
I definitely went for the compiler and all the accessories. The C compiler was far from ANSI-compliant and barely K&R. It made for some interesting times.
Minix 3 is BSD-licensed, and distributed on CD-ROM now, and can still be purchased from Pearson! https://www.pearson.com/en-us/subject-catalog/p/operating-sy...