I wouldn't say that Linux was "deliberately designed to be unlike Minix" -- after all, Torvalds' original announcement [1] was in comp.os.minix and he admitted that his OS "resembles [Minix] somewhat".

It's more accurate to say that Linux evolved to be very different from Minix because of Torvald's focus on pragmatism.

1. https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!msg/comp.os.mi...