engineer_comp_geek: Not to pile on or anything, but there are fundamental architectural reasons Linux couldn’t have been a copy of Minix: Minix was and is a microkernel OS whereas Linux was and is a monolithic OS. That’s because Tanenbaum was/is an OS design professor and Torvalds was/is a pragmatist. 
Microkernels have long been seen as the Right Thing for OS architecture but they’ve also long had real problems with speed and other efficiency concerns. It’s possible to make them fast but it’s a lot more work relative to a monolithic kernel.
In short, it’s impossible to port any substantial amount of code from a microkernel to a monolithic kernel. Further, SCO and the Alexis de Tocqueville Institute are run by absolute morons, but you already knew that.
Anyway Torvalds and Tanenbaum had it out in grand style in a thread started by Tanenbaum called “LINUX is obsolete.” It’s preserved here (and elsewhere) for posterity and it’s worth a read.