In normal multiprogramming environment, several processes may compete for getting resources. Here, if a process requests for a resource and if the resource is not available at a particular time then the process enters into waiting state. But, sometimes a waiting state process is not converted into its present state and thus the process enters into a new situation called as indefinite blocking or deadlock state. Hence, we can say that a deadlock or starvation state occurs in a distributed system whenever two or more processes are in waiting state indefinitely for an event which is caused by one of the waiting processes.

Mutual Exclusion (MUTEX) is a condition where two or more processes want to access the same non-sharable resources e.g. printer. Therefore, the MUTEX ensures that at most one process can access a non-sharable resource at any time (Safety). The sharable resources on the other hand do not require MUTEX access and therefore never enter into deadlock or starvation state e.g. The distributed system is a collection of physically separated homogeneous/heterogeneous computer systems or processes which are networked to provide various resources of the system to the connected users. The access of shared resources by connected users will increase computation speed, data availability, functionality and Reliability. In this research paper the existing MUTEX and deadlock detection algorithms of distributed systems are described and the performance of these algorithms analysed & compared.