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the linked documentation reads like flamebait

Nice try, but it won't start an Inferno.

How is BSD being influenced by the shadow? They have not adopted Systemd, don't support GNOME 3 (except OpenBSD), and are only adopting technology they consider suitable, not anything & everything.

As for Plan 9, there is an FOSS version of it called Inferno. You could try that out.

Didn't you hear? Everything has to run in the browser now. I'm waiting for the operating system that runs in a browser so I can create an infinite recursive loop of stupidity.

And here you go!

You know, the OS from the people who created Unix.

The Fourth International Workshop on Plan 9 is scheduled for October of this year, so I don't thinks quite dead yet. The "Plan 9 from User Space" project ports many Plan 9 user tools to Linux and other Unix-like environments, and there is also a project (Glendix) to create an OS distro using the Plan 9 userland with the Linux kernel.

They also had an associated embedded OS called Inferno.

Inferno is still around.

It cost something like $600 or $800 10 years ago, and took literally minutes to load a web page at modem speeds.

Its been open soruce for the last five years, though two or three major versions newer than whatever you used ten years ago.

Personally... I'd be more interested in an operating system written in a managed language, much like MS's Singularity. Given an efficient and secure JIT compiler, and a "safe" language, one could write an OS that is both (more) easily provable to be secure, and probably efficient enough for the "real world".

http://www.vitanuova.com/
i've found it secure enough, but i don't know if it's provable

The folks at Bell Labs who invented Unix and Plan 9 have been doing all that and more since the mid-1990s with Inferno. The core kernel is pure C, which has a bytecode interpreter for the Dis virtual machine, which almost all userspace code runs as, allowing it to run code safely even on CPUs that don't have hardware memory protection. Add to that a neat C-like programming language called Limbo that natively supports primitives inspired by C.A.R. Hoare's Communicating Sequential Processes, full support for distributed processing technology first developed for Plan 9, and you've got a really interesting open source embedded distributed OS that is working today.

Plan 9 is freely downloadable, you know...

Plan 9 is experimental and you know it. Inferno might be a viable alternative for a grid OS, commercially uppported with Plan 9 design, even though you intended it as joke.

http://www.vitanuova.com/solutions/grid/

Anyway, you sort of prove my point. Too many people make uniformed choice. There might be better solutions out there, if you are willing to think a liittle outside the box. But managers can't really do that, can they? They just look at the $number$ on their spreadsheet, and are mentally unable to factor in other things - like quality.

I guess the bottom line is: can I hire a cheap sysadmin, and a group of cheap web monkeys?

So, if people want to make a career underspecializing, be my guest. But just keep in mind that all this Linux PR you read is not set by the "community", but by big boys who are commoditizing enterprise software.

Browser-based OS? How about Inferno, open source since 2005, from the guys who brought you Unix. They even had an ActiveX plugin available back in the day.

Browser-based OS? How about Inferno, open source since 2005, from the guys who brought you Unix. They even had an ActiveX plugin available back in the day.

Get a better programming language.

module Timer where
import System.Environment
import Control.Concurrent
import Control.Concurrent.Chan

main = do {
putStrLn "Command Line Parameters";
sync <- newChan;
args <- getArgs;
forkIO $ timer sync $ length args;
sequence_ $ zipWith (zipf sync) [1..] args;
} where zipf sync n s = (readChan sync) >> (putStrLn $ (show n) ++ ": " ++ s)

timer :: Chan Int -> Int -> IO ()
timer sync n = mapM_ (\n -> (threadDelay $ 1000000) >> (writeChan sync n)) [1..n]

Get a better programming language.
And if don't like the taste of that one (what? Dennis Ritchie & Brian Kernighan not good enough for you!) there are other CSP languages available (what? Sir Charles Hoare not good enough for you!)

Seriously, this problem has been solved for 30 years.

The idea is not new, nor originated by Microsoft. It was actually pioneered by Ken Thompson and company at Bell Labs when they designed Inferno. Like Singularity it too is a "managed code" OS, but with Plan 9 as its base. User applications under Inferno are generally not run as native code, but as bytecode executing under the Dis Virtual Machine, because all native code runs with kernel privileges. This was done mainly to allow Inferno to run under embedded microprocessors that may not have many of the hardware features that OS designers have come to expect, with all memory protection, process scheduling, and the like provided in software by the Dis virtual machine which is at the heart of the Inferno kernel. Perhaps Singularity is intended to be a similar OS, geared mainly for the embedded market.

From what I know of Singularity, it's basically Microsoft's attempt to replicate the Inferno OS, but using C#/CLR instead of Limbo/Dis. At least the people behind Inferno had the balls to use real Free/Open Source licenses for their stuff. Sheesh, does anyone else find it a coincidence that Stephen Hawking applied the phrase from Dante's Inferno: "Abandon all hope, all ye who enter here" when describing black hole singularities? Or perhaps the designers of Singularity were well aware of the work done in Bell Labs by Ken Thompson and the like that led to the design of Inferno, and chose the name consciously?

From what I know of Singularity, it's basically Microsoft's attempt to replicate the Inferno OS, but using C#/CLR instead of Limbo/Dis. At least the people behind Inferno had the balls to use real Free/Open Source licenses for their stuff. Sheesh, does anyone else find it a coincidence that Stephen Hawking applied the phrase from Dante's Inferno: "Abandon all hope, all ye who enter here" when describing black hole singularities? Or perhaps the designers of Singularity were well aware of the work done in Bell Labs by Ken Thompson and the like that led to the design of Inferno, and chose the name consciously?

that little beauty has come up on the http://www.vitanuova.com/inferno/ mailing list before. One of us needs to get one and port the kernel to it!

We don't need newer methods for concurrency control. The actor model and CSP work just fine. CSP has been implemented in a handfull of languages, including Limbo. The actor model also has been implemented in a bunch of languages, including Erlang which has been used to build the massively concurrent British telecommunications system.

Concurrency is a problem that was solved decades ago.

Why would they need a GNI? Inferno's already Free/Open Source Software.

Inferno is based around the DIS virtual machine and much of the system code is written in Limbo which is compiled to DIS bytecode.

Plan9 is C based and can't run DIS natively.

Plan9 and Inferno now use a unified 9P protocol - 9p2000 (they used to use 9p and Styx respectively).

Lucent sold Inferno to Vita Nuova holdings http://www.vitanuova.com/ and they now develop Inferno and exploit it commercially.

Inferno and Plan9 are used in Lucent products. Plan9 with RT extensions is used in Lucent mobile phone masts to manage calls. Sape Mullender presented a paper at the IWP last year about it. http://plan9.escet.urjc.es/iwp9/cready/realtime.pd f

They were called 'Unix'. ;)

Seriously, Plan 9 is/was the planned successor to Unix. You can see the benefits of Plan 9's design today: just check out Inferno. You want distributed computing? It's all in there!

- Concurrent Sequential Programs - CSP. This is the programming model behind Erlang - one of the most successful concurrent programming languages available. Writing large, concurrent, robust apps is as simple as 'hello world' in Erlang. There is a whole new way of thinking that is pretty much mind bending. However, it is that new methodology that is key to the concurrency and robustness of the end applications. Be warned, it's functional!

Anyone remember Inferno and the IE Plugin they made for it? http://www.vitanuova.com/inferno/plugin/index.html

This is a full OS as a web plugin. Quite small and fast. If you want to "web-icize" linux, I'd suggest making a port of the linux kernel to a mozilla plugin, then write a console/X11 driver, and you're set. Now we can take advantage of all Linux tools in a browser, and we might finally have something better than all this Java / AJAX nonsense.

CSP for the win

http://www.vitanuova.com/inferno/limbo.html

http://plan9.bell-labs.com/magic/man2html/2/thread

Erlang-style concurrency: This is a ton of little threads that communicate solely through message passing, no shared state. On the plus side, it's got a working implementation that you can use today. On the down side (and this is my personal opinion), I'm not sure you really need the "functional" part of Erlang to use it (I think you just need threads that share nothing, and if you did that in a more conventional OO language it'd be fine), and Erlang's still quite short on libraries for anything outside of its core competency of network programming.

Actually, it's CSP-syle concurrency, and Limbo does it without functional programming. Limbo thankfully isn't object-oriented, however.

Concurrency is easy.

Besides this, is there a solution to this in the form of new programming languages?

Erlang and Limbo have concurrency primitives built-in. Both used CSP as a launching point. Both give the programming easy-to-use, lightweight processes and message passing. Processes share nothing.

However, neither have built-in support for multiple cores or multiple CPUs at the moment. It's just not a priority for the teams behind them. You can cheat such a setup with Erlang, however, as you can spawn processes on remote machines or remote Erlang instances. If you had two Erlang instances on the same machine, each would run on its own core, so all you'd need to do was spawn a process on each and then message pass between the two.

And sold it on : http://www.vitanuova.com/inferno/

It's great and you can learn Denis Ritchie's favourite language : Limbo

He was talking about usable operating system.

How many people browse the web under Syllabe, Haiku, ReactOS, FreeDOS ???

you want a lightweight interface? Try Inferno (see http://vitanuova.com./ Andrey Mirtchovski got the non-X11 (uses framebuffer) version working. Where a 128MB OLPC seems tight for memory, inferno happily runs its 120KB web browser, and it feels lost in 32 MB -- yep, we don't even have to bother giving it more than that.

You get a reasonable interface, you get a good language (Limbo -- far better than Python!), and you get a more modern OS universe than Linux.

Well worth a look -- now that I'm not working on the LinuxBIOS side any more (a full-time guy at OLPC now handles the LinuxBIOS for OLPC) I intend to do a native port of Inferno to OLPC.

BTW, if you want a command prompt, you can load Linux into the BIOS FLASH, and get an ash prompt on bootup -- or, in the system-as-shipped you can get a Forth prompt. Your choice. But getting to a command prompt on boot is easy, and you can then boot from a USB stick, and run whatever you want. You are NOT restricted to the shipped UI in any way, or even to Linux for that matter. Freedom to hack is a very important part of what OLPC is providing.

thanks

ron

Bell Labs actually were doing research in this field before anyone actually cared about it (late 80s). I am sure you know about Plan 9's attempt of solving the problem... I am pretty sure Inferno would of solved the problem if Lucent didn't stuff it up and dump it just minutes before its first commercial product (multi-service router). Inferno is open source/free software if someone really determine wants to turn it into something big I am sure they can. What many people don't know is Bell Labs did research in distributed applications. Its called Protium... it had great potential but it died off when its researchers quit after Lucent's stupid management decisions... it offers provides proper solutions. Replacing everything with Ruby solves no problems. The problems will still be there (just like how vnc still has very same problems with the x11 model). Real research is needed in the field, not moving the same model to a different application. Protium's research was in the right direction. Building upon it can offer a solution.

...it's generally quite easy to execute stack-based code efficiently on a register-based CPU.

This copyright NOTICE applies to all files in this directory and subdirectories, unless another copyright notice appears in a given file or subdirectory. If you take substantial code from this software to use in other programs, you must somehow include with it an appropriate copyright notice that includes the copyright notice and the other notices below. It is fine (and often tidier) to do that in a separate file such as NOTICE, LICENCE or COPYING. Copyright © 1994-1999 Lucent Technologies Inc. All rights reserved. Revisions Copyright © 2000-2005 Vita Nuova Holdings Limited (www.vitanuova.com). All rights reserved. Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions: The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software. THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

The two ideas are not so dissimilar.

In Plan 9 (and in the Plan 9-like Inferno, http://www.vitanuova.com/inferno) a file or set of files encapsulates the interface to an object, and in a sense the filesystem provides an analogue of the database. Whilst the encapsulation is not as neat as a true set of objects and a database and doesn't have the same level of integrity checking built-in by default, the advantages are 1. The relative simplicity of its approach. 2. The fact that such a relative simple approach can be more robust to some types of error and 3. It is easy, using very basic and well-understood tools, to chain objects together. Whilst it would be possible to create an actual database-driven solution, the total amount of code required to make it as easy to use might be larger. This having been said, I feel that Amiga OS also had some very neat solutions to this sort of problem.

Files and databases are by no means mutually-exclusive, of course, and you can build views onto one with the other.

Linux got the idea for /proc from Plan 9. However, it a very dumbed down version of Plan 9's. One of the major differences is that Plan 9's /proc controls processes while Linux really does nothing but represent them to some degree. One example is that you either kill a process by writing 'kill' to its clt (control) file or delete its directory. Plan 9 requires less syscalls thanks to this design. Inferno also has this design to manage its processes. Imagine this with Plan 9's distributing ideas...

The compilers used for Inferno are the same ones :

http://www.vitanuova.com/dist/4e/20060303/utils.tg z

I'm told the licence is different for those (GPL, MIT or something like that), though I have not looked myself.

I think that's the file, the full list is here :

http://www.vitanuova.com/inferno/downloads.html

The compilers used for Inferno are the same ones :

http://www.vitanuova.com/dist/4e/20060303/utils.tg z

I'm told the licence is different for those (GPL, MIT or something like that), though I have not looked myself.

I think that's the file, the full list is here :

http://www.vitanuova.com/inferno/downloads.html

There is APE for POSIX support. And linuxemu for emulating linux binaries.

I personally have not checked out Savaje OS. Inferno would be most comparable to such an OS. Inferno is based on many of Plan 9's ideas but with a new programming language, Limbo (famed for being the only other language than C Dennis Ritchie documented) and a virtual machine, Dis. Limbo can run on bare hardware without a host operating system with around 700KB of memory.

Rob Pike explains the advantages of the Dis virtual machine. Unlike the .Net and Java virtual machines which are stack based Dis is register based. This allows it to run on bare hardware and doesn't require a (according to some heavyweight) operation to translate it from stack to register. Dis provides virtually infinite registers like Parrot. For more information read Pike's paper, The design of the Inferno virtual machine.

There is APE for POSIX support. And linuxemu for emulating linux binaries.

I personally have not checked out Savaje OS. Inferno would be most comparable to such an OS. Inferno is based on many of Plan 9's ideas but with a new programming language, Limbo (famed for being the only other language than C Dennis Ritchie documented) and a virtual machine, Dis. Limbo can run on bare hardware without a host operating system with around 700KB of memory.

Rob Pike explains the advantages of the Dis virtual machine. Unlike the .Net and Java virtual machines which are stack based Dis is register based. This allows it to run on bare hardware and doesn't require a (according to some heavyweight) operation to translate it from stack to register. Dis provides virtually infinite registers like Parrot. For more information read Pike's paper, The design of the Inferno virtual machine.

There is APE for POSIX support. And linuxemu for emulating linux binaries.

I personally have not checked out Savaje OS. Inferno would be most comparable to such an OS. Inferno is based on many of Plan 9's ideas but with a new programming language, Limbo (famed for being the only other language than C Dennis Ritchie documented) and a virtual machine, Dis. Limbo can run on bare hardware without a host operating system with around 700KB of memory.

Rob Pike explains the advantages of the Dis virtual machine. Unlike the .Net and Java virtual machines which are stack based Dis is register based. This allows it to run on bare hardware and doesn't require a (according to some heavyweight) operation to translate it from stack to register. Dis provides virtually infinite registers like Parrot. For more information read Pike's paper, The design of the Inferno virtual machine.

There is APE for POSIX support. And linuxemu for emulating linux binaries.

I personally have not checked out Savaje OS. Inferno would be most comparable to such an OS. Inferno is based on many of Plan 9's ideas but with a new programming language, Limbo (famed for being the only other language than C Dennis Ritchie documented) and a virtual machine, Dis. Limbo can run on bare hardware without a host operating system with around 700KB of memory.

Rob Pike explains the advantages of the Dis virtual machine. Unlike the .Net and Java virtual machines which are stack based Dis is register based. This allows it to run on bare hardware and doesn't require a (according to some heavyweight) operation to translate it from stack to register. Dis provides virtually infinite registers like Parrot. For more information read Pike's paper, The design of the Inferno virtual machine.

There is APE for POSIX support. And linuxemu for emulating linux binaries.

I personally have not checked out Savaje OS. Inferno would be most comparable to such an OS. Inferno is based on many of Plan 9's ideas but with a new programming language, Limbo (famed for being the only other language than C Dennis Ritchie documented) and a virtual machine, Dis. Limbo can run on bare hardware without a host operating system with around 700KB of memory.

Rob Pike explains the advantages of the Dis virtual machine. Unlike the .Net and Java virtual machines which are stack based Dis is register based. This allows it to run on bare hardware and doesn't require a (according to some heavyweight) operation to translate it from stack to register. Dis provides virtually infinite registers like Parrot. For more information read Pike's paper, The design of the Inferno virtual machine.

First of all there is Charon from Inferno. It supports html, EMCAScript (1.1 IIRC), CSS, DOM (level 1 IIRC) and https. (See screenshot however this one is a bit outdated)

Abaco is the most actively developed Plan 9 web browser. It supports most of html. DOM level 3 development has been started. Mozilla's Javascript engine has been ported to Plan 9 and can be used today for a Javascript shell. This will provide abaco with Javascript in the future. Work on CSS has started but I do not know what has been done or where it is heading. Abaco has been ported to Linux and friends via Plan 9 from Userspace. Package managers are encouraged to make packages of abaco for their systems. (See screenshot)

Then there are webpage, links, mothra, and htmlfmt.

Finally there are text web browsers for acme (htmlfmt for Plan 9 and see this for Inferno)

In other news, SDL now works on Plan 9.

First of all there is Charon from Inferno. It supports html, EMCAScript (1.1 IIRC), CSS, DOM (level 1 IIRC) and https. (See screenshot however this one is a bit outdated)

Abaco is the most actively developed Plan 9 web browser. It supports most of html. DOM level 3 development has been started. Mozilla's Javascript engine has been ported to Plan 9 and can be used today for a Javascript shell. This will provide abaco with Javascript in the future. Work on CSS has started but I do not know what has been done or where it is heading. Abaco has been ported to Linux and friends via Plan 9 from Userspace. Package managers are encouraged to make packages of abaco for their systems. (See screenshot)

Then there are webpage, links, mothra, and htmlfmt.

Finally there are text web browsers for acme (htmlfmt for Plan 9 and see this for Inferno)

In other news, SDL now works on Plan 9.

At the OS level, a decent scheduler and not using giant locking will get you most of the way.

To get the most out of it though, the applications need to be multi-threaded and multi-threaded programming in (standard) C/C++ is not straight forward, in fact it can be almost downright impossible to debug.

Other programming languages are much more suited to multi threaded programming, particularly those that use the CSP model.

Construction of Concurrent Systems Software
http://www.herpolhode.com/rob/lec1.pdf
http://www.herpolhode.com/rob/lec3.pdf
http://www.herpolhode.com/rob/lec5.pdf

My favourite, of course, is Limbo but I only know of one environment where that is implemented : Inferno

here's another discussion on a similar theme

http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=164547&cid= 13736089

At the OS level, a decent scheduler and not using giant locking will get you most of the way.

To get the most out of it though, the applications need to be multi-threaded and multi-threaded programming in (standard) C/C++ is not straight forward, in fact it can be almost downright impossible to debug.

Other programming languages are much more suited to multi threaded programming, particularly those that use the CSP model.

Construction of Concurrent Systems Software
http://www.herpolhode.com/rob/lec1.pdf
http://www.herpolhode.com/rob/lec3.pdf
http://www.herpolhode.com/rob/lec5.pdf

My favourite, of course, is Limbo but I only know of one environment where that is implemented : Inferno

here's another discussion on a similar theme

http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=164547&cid= 13736089

caerwyn> tmcm, i rewrote the cryptfile.b to work as a file fs instead of a file2chan.
caerwyn> the only advantage is that the standard kfs can be used because it can read the file length, which is not available in a file2chan
caerwyn> is anyone interested in having a secure, encrypted, chat channel?
tmcm> yes, i am
tmcm> have you posted the new cryptfile.b yet?
tmcm> i'm interested in that
tmcm> comcast has really been fucking up in my area
tmcm> i've been offline for most of the past 24 hours
caerwyn> hi tmcm
caerwyn> i began looking at all the ways i was giving away private info in the last week.
caerwyn> what was easily trackable and logged etc. by outside companies and govt.
caerwyn> it's hopeless.
caerwyn> even my local public pool started requiring photo id with a barcode that they scan for everyone entering the pool.
caerwyn> and this applies to kids too!
caerwyn> it freaked me out.
caerwyn> time to quit using google/gmail etc. fire up tor. encrypt all network connections.
caerwyn> turn off the mobile phone
caerwyn> throw away the loyalty cards
caerwyn> i got a letter from wells fargo recently saying someone had stolen the computers storing my personal data.
caerwyn> who can you trust
tmcm> no one
caerwyn> bbl
caerwyn> back
caerwyn> bbl
tmcm> caerwyn: have you written or considered writing anything for osnews?
caerwyn> i considered it. and started writing something. but not much.
caerwyn> its hard to write that kind of thing. takes ages.
caerwyn> my conclusion of the day is that email is no way to have a private conversation
caerwyn> and neither is irc
tmcm> right
caerwyn> i spent over an hour today setting up gnupgp and thunderbird
caerwyn> and looking at webmail etc.
caerwyn> it's all hopeless.
tmcm> i thought the spree service you have/had set up was pretty good alternative
tmcm> you get user authentication and encryption if you mount it with -C
tmcm> that should read (user authentication) and (encryption if you mount it with -C)
caerwyn> yes. with /appl/demo/chat/chatsrv.b that'd be an encrypted private conversation
caerwyn> email reveals too much in the headers. the sender, receiver etc. with an inferno append only mailbox a user could mount the service and append an encrypted message.
caerwyn> and the connections could all go through tor.
caerwyn> and the userid's are anonymous
tmcm> you've heard of nym.alias.net, right?
caerwyn> no
tmcm> finger help@nym.alias.net
caerwyn> i was looking at some anonymous remailers todays
tmcm> nym servers allow you to have a two way exchange
tmcm> instead of just the sending feature of typical mixmaster setups
caerwyn> i'll look at it tomorrow
caerwyn> goodnight

They don't want their whole lives bound up in one piece of hardware. People want to get access wherever they are, from whatever device they're using.

Not necessarily far-fetched as you might think. It's been done before; for instance check Inferno, an OS developed in Bell labs.(AT&T/Lucent/VitaNuova ....). A full Inferno system ran as a plugin for IE.

Hey hands off! We don't need you to crap up Inferno.



In case your English is absolute crap. Inferno is a synonym for hell

Java and .NET virtual machines are stack based, a side-effect of being designed by language programmers as opposed to chip designers. Translating from a stack based language to a register-based assembly language is a "heavyweight" operation. This means Java's and .NET's compilers and virtual machines have to be many times larger and slower than a register based virtual machine. Anyone who blames the slow down on something else has no clue (i.e. the toolkit). In contrast, Inferno's virtual machine (dis) - being designed by chip designers - was inspired to use a register based system that more closely matched the internal workings of real-world processors. They found, as RISC designers would have expected, that without a load-store design it was difficult to improve the instruction pipeline and thereby operate at higher speeds. They felt that all future processors would thus move to a load-store design, and built Inferno to reflect this.