Inferno 4 Available for Download

Tarantolato writes "A new preliminary public release of the Inferno distributed operating system is now available for downloading from Vita Nuova's website. Inferno is meant to be a better Plan 9, which was meant to be a better Unix. It can run as a standalone OS, as an application on top of an existing one, or even as a browser plugin. Also, all of its major components are named after things related to hell."

Comments

inferno?

[wvitXpert]

never heard of it... is it hell to use?

Re:inferno?

[earlgreen]

No, that's called Windows.

Re:inferno?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just download, burn the CD, and fire it up. You may think it smokes, but I'll be damned if I can see what the devil is so hot about it.

Re:Inferno?

[frenetic3]

If you look at some of the docs, there seem to be a bunch of Bell Labs folks contributing (perhaps even principal developers)... including a doc by Brian Kernighan and lo and behold, Dennis Ritchie, the authors of one of the canonical C books ("The C Programming Language" -- more affectionately known as "K&R".)

Could be interesting stuff, especially the Limbo "C-like, concurrent" programming language (though the syntax seems like an ugly version of Python with some bizarre odds and ends tacked on like a <- operator for "channels").

-fren

Re:Inferno?

[Anonymous Coward]

Those circles and arrows aren't tacked on. They wrote the entire thing using lightweight pipes AKA 'rendezvous'. It's some clever combination of kernel and user-level threading. Inferno was *almost* famous. It had the grave misfortune of being released 1 year after java 1.0. The final nail in the coffin came from Oracle's Ellison, who pussyfooted around with the idea of using it in the Network PC (remember that?) before putting the kibosh on the whole deal.

-- Anon Coward

Re:Inferno?

[slamb]

Could be interesting stuff, especially the Limbo "C-like, concurrent" programming language (though the syntax seems like an ugly version of Python with some bizarre odds and ends tacked on like a <- operator for "channels").

I don't see the resemblance to Python. Limbo has:

• explicit static typing to Python's dynamic typing. (I don't like either; I prefer ML-style type inference.)
• declarations and definitions in separate files. This is an aid to the compiler, not the person; the compiler should be able to separate them as with Java, Python, C#, Ruby, Perl, and every other modern language. When editing, it's much more friendly to change these in one place. If you want to see the declarations only, you still can - through Javadoc-style tools or through a folding text editor.
• graphics through Tk. Meaning embedded strings in a completely different, interpreted programming language. With escaping hassles, because stuff like button names is right in the middle of the embedded control string.
• curly braces to denote scope, rather than Python's whitespace. Like many languages, but I like the Python way better.
• no functional programming features (lambda functions, tail recursion, etc). Or if it has them, they're not mentioned in this paper.
• no support for keyword arguments, that I can see. (Like Python, PL/SQL, Ada, VHDL, etc. have. They make function calls much easier to interpret without flipping back and forth to a API manual.)
• the channel feature you mentioned. It seems like a suckier version of Erlang's message-passing.

I don't see any redeeming qualities.

Re:Inferno?

[warrax_666]

declarations and definitions in separate files. This is an aid to the compiler, not the person;

Wrong. Compilers do not need separate interface definitions. They might just as well use the source files and find all the definitions there.

There is actually a very good (programmer-centric) reason for doing having separate interface/implementation: If you want to remain completely (binary or source) interface-compatible you just lock down the interface file. If the language is strongly typed and pedantic about matching type/function/value definitions exactly it will complain if you accidentally change the declaration of a function (this is particularly easy to do accidentally in type-inferenced languages like ML). Thus, you can ensure interface compatibility in this very simple way.

(Of course, in C/C++ this is not nearly that useful because compilers usually don't actually check any of this. But it works very well).

Re:Inferno?

[anothy]

Inferno was developed by the same lab - and many of the same individuals - who developed Plan 9 and, earlier, Unix. that lab did all the early development, and while the primary development is now done by Vita Nuova, there remains collaboration between them (and it helps that Plan 9 and Inferno are very similar under the hood).

Of particular note is that Dennis Ritchie has written exactly two language reference manuals in his life: C and Limbo. that says a lot to me, anyway.

name dropping aside, Limbo really is a huge win for user-mode programming. the channel stuff isn't bizarre at all - it's a very elegant way to handle inter-process communication. Python's got nothing on Limbo for this.

Re:Inferno?

[Anonymous Coward]

When I was at Bell Labs, I wrote some fairly
substantial software under Inferno. It has
some nice features, and is by far the
cleanest environment for multithreading
that I've ever seen.

At the time (c. 2000), it had a few misfeatures,
such as no way to signal that you've closed
a channel between two threads, but hopefully
that's been fixed. Limbo is a nice, clean
language. It isn't object oriented: think of
it as the ideal C, rather than python, java or
C++. However, interestingly enough,
you can do large-scale OO things reasonably
nicely in two ways:

First, for objects that are more like lightweight
daemons, you can have a thread that simulates
a file (or file system, even). The rest of
the program can then read and write to that
special file to interact.
One can be OO by implementing a whole directory,
where each file corresponds to a OO message
(member function).

Second, for even ligher weight stuff,
you can easily (trivially easily, compared
to most languages) spawn a thread that
talks via the rendevous mechanism,
and treat that as a little light-weight
server to which you can pass
arbitrary data structures.

There's no support for fine-grained OO,
which was, I think, a reaction to some
of the OO-idiots out there that
insist on making objects out of things
that aren't naturally separable.

The failing is that there are not
extensive libraries, and there is certainly
not much in the line of applications that
one can download.

It is very elegant in many respects.
If you need to write multi-threaded things,
and can live without much in the way of
libraries or applications, you should think
about it.

Re:Inferno?

[warrax_666]

Compilers do not need them if properly designed, as with the many
modern languages I cited.

But C and C++ require this. Ever notice how in C and C++, you can't refer to an undeclared type, even if it is declared later in the file? You have to provide at least a forward definition. ("class Bob;") Likewise functions, data members, etc. This is most annoying in C++, with inline functions. You have to pay attention to ordering. In other languages, you do not.

This is unrelated to whether or not you require a separate interface file. The reason that the forward declaration exists is that you cannot declare circular types (such as linked list elements) without them. In all other cases, you can just sort the declarations topologically and write them out in that order.

Besides, what you're saying is true even of "properly designed languages" like ML. Just try:

type list_of_a =
Cons a list_of_a
| Nil;

type a =
int;

It doesn't compile, but it DOES work if you use:

type list_of_a =
Cons a list_of_a
| Nil
and type a =
int;

(note the and)

So you're basically talking about a syntactical problem in C/C++ which forces you to declare (textuall) things in a topological order.

Okay...that's great for those 1% of people who want the interface file to remain absolutely static. And I mean absolutely static. No new methods. No changes to the comments. No nothing. (In fact, I doubt there are even 1% of people who want this, once they give it some thought.)

For the remaining 99% of us, this is unwanted Bondage and Discipline.

Making up a statistic is never a good way to argue a point.

Besides, nobody said anything about forcing you to use separate interface/implementation. I just said to it could be a good thing to use it and have it be supported by the compiler.

In my preferred language, OCaml, you have the option of having a separately declared interface (a .mli file) or not having one. If you have one, the compiler will rigorously check that your code complies with the declared interface. If you don't have one, it will just generate the interface your code implements.

By the way, since you brought them up, declaring a proper interface is much more important in type-inferencing languages, since even tiny
changes to code can cause completely different types to be inferred. For example, in OCaml:

let f x =
x + 5;

let g x =
x +. 5;

f and g have different signatures even though the difference is tiny. If you're interfacing to binary libraries it helps immensely to know that the library would not have compiled if such a type-altering change has occurred in the "hidden" code.

Maybe the people who want the interface to remain static can do so in a more intelligent way. Like comparing javap output on check-in and
ensuring the old methods are there, with the same signatures as before.

You call that intelligent? Instead of just having the compiler do it? It already knows all about type aliases, what types are compatible,
etc. etc. (i.e. all the stuff that makes checking such things using a postprocessor extremely error-prone).

Re:Inferno?

[Quixote]

Inferno was *almost* famous. It had the grave misfortune of being released 1 year after java 1.0.

No, I think mistake that Bell Labs made was to charge everybody (including Joe User, the hobbyist) for the OS. Nobody could download it for free and try it out. You had to pay for it.
If I'm a hobbyist and just want to try something out, I don't feel like shelling out $100 for something that seems quite esoteric.
Basically, BL's desire to milk it completely destroyed Plan9's chances. Couple that with Linux's surge, and Plan9 was doomed.
Later, much later, they released it for free, but by then it was too little, too late.

Just what we need

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh great, a Christian operating system. Lovely.

Re:Just what we need

[Veridium]

I understand the kernel doesn't panic, it just dies for your sins...

Inferno?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is the company in cahoots with the BSD daemon?

informative

[Anonymous Coward]

thanks for the link about hell. I know all about inferno 4 and plan 9, but I've never heard of that one before :)

Shall Jesux rise again?

[cant_get_a_good_nick]

I would be one to say that Jesux shall smite this thing you call hell, but there hasn't been much activity on the website in a while. I wonder if they'll ship creationism as their mailer/Outlook replacement, for they surely cannot ship evolution .

INSERT WITTY BSD DAEMON JOKE HERE

Yeah I tried it

[Orion Blastar]

had to key in "666" for the administrator password. Got a visit from the Asmodeus Daemon after I logged on. ;)

Re:Yeah I tried it

[JanneM]

No, he just had a guest account.

yay!

[Lord Ender]

An operating system that can run as a browser plugin! Just what I have been waiting for! Now after I've been towing my mobile home on my bicycle, or flossing my teeth with boat anchor chain, I can come back to my computer for some equally well-matched technology.

New p2p

[hsidhu]

How about building a new p2p file sharing app on top of this thing? A truly cross platform app since it would run on top of the following architectures:

Host Operating Systems

Windows NT/2000/XP
Linux
FreeBSD
Solaris
Plan 9

Supported Architectures

Intel x86 (386 & higher)
Intel XScale
IBM PowerPC
ARM StrongARM (ARM & Thumb)
Sun SPARC

and it supports crypto and since its native code its faster than java.

Re:New p2p

[Temporal]

Java compiles to native code. Just because the translation is done at program startup doesn't mean it is slower. In fact, because of this, it can perform optimizations that couldn't be used in a C compiler (optimizing for specific CPU's, etc.).

The problem with Java is that its GUI toolkit is slow.

In any case, with a file sharing app, CPU efficiency is certainly not an issue. You should never worry abot CPU efficiency if you don't need to, as you will only be making things harder on yourself.

And, finally, writing portable C/C++ code is really not that hard if you know what you are doing. Certainly you'd be better off with that than you would be asking all of your users to install an extra OS over their current one just to run your program. Really, the most important factor in making file sharing successful is to get lots and lots of users, and most of those users are going to be people who have absolutely no idea what an operating system even is.

Hell comes in many flavors

[warkda rrior]

Slashdot says:

[...] all of its major components are named after things related to hell.

I see on the Inferno website the following components:

The Inferno operating system [...] includes the Dis virtual machine, integral support for the Styx network protocol, and an implementation of the Tk user interface toolkit.

I am not sure which part of hell the Tk UI toolkit represents, but I feel their pain.

Good introduction to Limbo

[harikiri]

...as in the programming language for Inferno, written by Brian Kernighan, is available here.

I've briefly looked into trying out Inferno, but bear in mind it's not designed as a desktop system. Instead, the market it seems to be used in is the embedded market - so it'd be interesting to see how easy you can write server apps for application boxes with it.

However, it initially appears that Limbo is the only way to program for Inferno (prove me wrong please), which would be an obvious impediment to developer take-up.

Re:Good introduction to Limbo

[shaitand]

From the website:

"Features
Compact
Runs on devices with as little as 1MB of RAM

Complete Development Environment
Including Acme IDE, compilers, shell, UNIX like commands & graphical debugger

Limbo
An advanced modular, safe, concurrent programming language with C like syntax.

Library Modules
Limbo modules for networking, graphics (including GUI toolkit), security and more...

JIT Compilation
Improves application performance by compiling object code on the fly (Just In Time).

Namespaces
Powerful resource representation using a single communication protocol. Import and export resources completely transparently.

Full Source Code
Full source code for the whole system and applications, subject to licence terms

And more...

# Online manual pages
# Full unicode support
# Dynamic modules
# Advanced GUI toolkit
# Javascript 1.1 web browser
# C cross compiler suite
# Remote Debugging
# Games, Demos & Utilities"

Most relevant on the list is the C cross compiler suite. Theres at least one language other than Limbo you can code in (although it seems limbo is designed by many of the guys who wrote C and other minor items of note such as Unix).

If there is one language any developer you'd really want on the playing field knows, it's C.

Re:Good introduction to Limbo

[anothy]

to clear up a sibling: the C cross-compilers are used for building inferno, not for programming in inferno. you are correct that, at present, the only language you can write user-mode stuff in is Limbo (well, unless you count writing Dis assembly). anything that can be made to compile down to Dis bytecode is possible, though. there was a Java implementation some years ago (way out of date, not maintained or distributed), and a summer student at Bell Labs did an implementation for some scripting language (i forget which, but Perl or Python are sticking out at me; he was working with a bunch of web folks, so it seems likely). there's no theoretical reason why lots of languages couldn't compile down to Dis (C/C++ has issues in particular, however).

there are options for getting existing C code into the Inferno world. at a high level, 3.

1. keep it stand alone (on another OS) and provide a Styx interface to it. Styx is nice and simple; a project i was on did this with existing OCR software.
2. put it in the kernel as a file server. this is how, for example, the network stack works. it's all C code, but the kernel provides a Styx interface up to applications. we've done this with something, but i can't remember what. TTS maybe.
3. put it in the kernel and provide a module interface to it. this is how the fundamental stuff - like the Sys module, which provides the nearest analogue to libc for Limbo - works.

all three are more work than a simple ports, but the results of the first two give you distribution for free, and all three make things easily available to all your apps and the environment.

and yes, it has been an impediment to developer take-up, which is a real shame. Limbo is a simply beautiful language.

Re:License

[Tarantolato]

Read some of Stallman's rants about the Plan9 license(s). Vita Nuova's license has the same problems.

Plan 9 had a license where you couldn't sue Lucent on an unrelated matter if you used it. They've now changed that (as of June 2003), and Stallman now considers it a "free software license incompatible with the GPL". From the GNU site:

• This is a free software license, incompatible with the GNU GPL. We recommend that you not use this license for new software that you write, but it is ok to use and improve Plan 9 under this license.

Inferno's license seems to be the same as the new plan 9 one. (But I haven't looked in depth).

OSS authors: Think carefully about communication.

[Futurepower(R)]

It amazes me how bad open source people are at marketing. Why make your project, which requires a huge amount of excellent thinking, the butt of jokes?

Why give a name to your open source project that will cause those who have less than complete technical knowledge to feel uncomfortable about adopting what you have done?

One question is, how bad can it get? Will there one day be a "Worthless" project? There is already a "Waste".

The funniest bad name for an open source project was "Killustrator". It's easy to see how the name was chosen. Everything in KDE began with a K, as much as possible, and Killustrator is an open source illustration program. It didn't seem to bother anyone that the first syllable of the name was "Kill". I can imagine the Killustrator author thinking how convenient it is that the word illustrator begins with a vowel; that makes it easy, just put a K at the beginning, and you have a name!

The name Killustrator gave everyone a million dollars worth of laughs, and did perhaps $10 million damage to Adobe's reputation when the CEO of Adobe overreacted, saying people would confuse Killustrator with Adobe Illustrator.

Do open source authors believe that there are only a few concepts available, not enough for everyone? Why copy the FreeBSD devil idea?

And Why did the FreeBSD project adopt that idea? I know FreeBSD is an excellent OS, and the favorite BSD for ISPs, but there are some who will be discouraged by the amateurish baby red devil marketing scheme.

Re:Cool ...

[CdBee]

Yes, and apparently it will burn CDs too - burn them in the flames of hell you unholy pirate !!!

Re:OSS authors: Think carefully about communicatio

[shaitand]

You've obviously never seen the devil girl. I'm a linux man myself but a couple more runins with her when the wife isn't around and I may convert ;)

OSS authors:Think carefully about [making money]

[Anonymous Coward]

I got a better question. Why does everything have to be commercialized? Can't we have some FUN with our software without having to pay a tribute to the marketing gods? Some of us simply don't care, to put it bluntly.

Alternative to VMWare?

[gbulmash]

Considering it runs as a service, it sounds like it might be marketed as an alternative to VMWare if it had a decent ports collection... at least for those who want to have a generic GUI *nix they can access from Windows instead of dual booting.

Re:OSS authors: Think carefully about communicatio

[molnarcs]

"It amazes me how bad open source people are at marketing."

Maybe these folks don't give shit about marketing ... they just do it because they like it. WASTE is a good name IMHO - funny reference to Pynchon's Crying of lot 49. I don't think WASTE author wanted to 'take over the market' with his prog either.

FreeBSD's beastie ... yeah, sure, the OS logo is the first thing everyone would consider when choosing a solution (yahoo seems very much discouraged by chuck - name for beastie btw -, as does NYInternet, Pair Networks, netcraft itself or the apache project).

Linux was criticized for the 'idiotic' looking penguin as well, remember? Yet I don't think that its market entry was very much hindered because of its logo.

Re:I thought a better unix was ...

[Tarantolato]

I thought a better unix was linux!

Linux is better mostly because it's free. It does not fix some of the imperfections in the core design (for good reasons; that would break Posix compatibility). According the Inferno Design Principles, Inferno takes Unix ideas and applies them more consistently. For instance: everything is a file. In Inferno, what you're typing in a text editor window can be queried in something like /gui/window/...etc. Also, the network protocol is entirely file-based. Your desktop system (or smartphone, or brower plugin) sees the server or another client as part of the same filesystem that its own resources sit in.

Inferno on Lucent BRICK Firewal

[hytrex]

Friend told me that Lucent is using Inferno (version 3) on Lucent BRICK firewall (model 20, model 80 ... model 1000). It is stateful firewall and works well! he says

Re:License

[runderwo]

It's not liberal. It claims to cover any use of the software, which puts it in the class of licenses known as 'EULA', as opposed to simply being a permissive copyright license.

All jokes aside...

[shaitand]

Is this what I think it is?

A multi-platform OS, it can run standalone, as a virtual machine on every major OS (including every linux distro) and give full blown access to the system? Plus it can run in a sort of transparent mode so you can port your app to it and have your app appear to be a native app?

From the description it sounds like it's multi-threaded and designed with distributed systems (read cluster) in mind.

Plus it already has a language designed by the fathers of C and C cross compiler (wonder how well it works, also being designed by the fathers of C).

So in one sweep we have a solution suitable (sounds like it carries 1mb ram overhead) for most applications. Anything written for it magically runs on every major platform, it's highly scriptable and carries most of the magic of Unix packed with it wherever it's run from.

If it's significantly faster than Java I'd say we have a solution to the multi-distro problem as far as apps go.

Re:All jokes aside...

[Anonymous Coward]

You're not too far off the track. It is a network
operating system that lends itself to clustering
applications, and Vita Nuova has a few big clients
looking at exactly this.

Plus the Vita Nuova people are very approachable.
(Their office is virtually within sight of mine).

One of the great advantages is that just about
everything looks like a file so it is very easy
to create namespaced collections of device-type
files that might be resident on your machine, or
just as easily resident on a collection of
disparate machines. It makes prototyping GRID
applications very much easier.

Personally I am very keen on looking more at
Inferno for GRID computing just as soon as I have
more time to spend on it. It's not a solution to
all ills, but it has definite advantages, and
seems to be very robust and has a small footprint.
I've seen it running happily on a fairly old
PDA being used to seamlessly integrate a whole
series of remote devices.

Aaron Turner, University of York

Re:OSS authors: Think carefully about communicatio

[drgonzo59]

I think that the people who work on these projects are not "market oriented." They do what they do because it is fun and they probably could care less if some manager dude thinks the name of the software will offend or drive away the potential clients. Maybe it's supposed to drive away the people who lack a sense of humour. /* flaimbait start */ Let them use microsoft products /* flaimbait end */ And besides, I don't think they copied the FreeBSD's devil idea, I think they got their inspiration from Dante Alighieri

Call me when they get to

[panurge]

Paradiso.

A few obvious questions:

• Do all comments have to be in terza rima
• Is there an annoying help popup called Virgil?
• Presumably the processor needs extreme cooling?

Oh, and isn't it a bit arrogant of the designers:
"I was made by the first power, the first holiness and the first love"

And if the above sounds like raving, just google for Dante Alighieri...

Re:environment

[mritunjai]

When's the last time you saw an app so well developed that it ran on almost any platform - not to mention as its own OS.

Emacs :-P (at least the "own OS" part).

Re:Tinkered with an early version of Inferno

[anothy]

well then check it out again! :-)
the license has changed substantially (it's free if your work is), a commercial source license is now a couple orders of magnitude cheaper, and the tech has progressed substantially since 1997 (which, if i recall properly, was before even the 1.0 release).
MS, incidentally, found it interesting enough to offer to buy it twice in 1996 and 1997.

oh, and having met Dennis Ritchie in a work environment, i'm thinking that if your co-worker was chewed out, he/she deserved it. the big three - Dennis, Ken, and Brian - are some of the easiest geniuses to work with i've ever met (and Bell Labs had plenty wandering around).

Re:Tryst with Plan9

[anothy]

yes, plan 9 has driver issues. so will any small project. if you want to try things outside the mainstream, you're going to have to get over that.

also, "its GUI sucked" is an overly broad and essentially content-free statement. a large part of it is subjective. the gui is certainly minimalist, but i really like that. i try hard to get any X11 system i have to use to look as much like it as possible. there's a number of things which you simply can't say "suck" - things like the chording in Acme, the exact window positioning with sweeping on creation, the underlying model. all amazing. particularly the underlying model - built using the same primitives as everything else in the system. you get things like distribution and recursion for free. wonderful stuff.

all that being said, if you can't get Plan 9 working, that's a good reason to check out Inferno. all the Plan 9 concepts, with one or two others in the mix, and can run hosted (read: no driver worries).

Re:really cool...

[rpeppe]

Inferno isn't entirely about speeding things up through distributed computation, although we have done that - most importantly, it provides an appropriate set of tools for dealing with today's distributed, networked world.

By using a single, simple metaphor to represent external resources (a hierarchical filesystem with streamlined semantics), it's possible to write general purpose components that are not conceivable in other systems, because their resources are not available in such a uniform way.

For instance:

• Distributed resources: A simple, but deeply-thought-out protocol allows access to a resource hierarchy to be made available, transport independently, through a channel. Thus, any resource in the filesystem can trivially be made available over the network. This includes graphics, network interfaces, serial devices, raw disks, user-level filesystems, user-level program interfaces, etc, etc.
• Authentication: Inferno can use a single well-defined authentication protocol to secure access to all external resources in a transparent, end-to-end fashion. Applications need not have any knowledge of this, but nonetheless gain all the benefits. If you're using this stuff, you couldn't care less about 802.11 security (or lack of it) - it's irrelevant.
• Transformation: it's easy to "layer" resources; for instance I could export a read-only version of a particular resource just by forbidding all Styx Twrite, Tremove, Twstat, etc operations.
• Application transparency: because everything looks like a file, and all the traditional unix tools just work on files (or byte-streams - same difference), it's possible to use all of Inferno's unix-like tools directly on devices, or aspects of a program's external interface without any extra "glue" code at all. This vastly decreases the dev-time, as you can just write independent components, test them individually, and just stick 'em together to make the final application.

Basically it's all about isolating complexity, network and everything else, into independently verifiable bits; the system lets you plug it all together.

Almost all of the complexity in most conventional systems today comes from backward compatibility requirements. Inferno can do what it does by discarding that backward compatibility - the obvious cost is that it's quite an effort to get your old programs to run underneath it. However, for many applications, that's not an issue, whereas the unreasonable complexity of other "modern" systems is.