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Inferno OS Running On Android Phones
New submitter Digi-John writes "Employees at Sandia National Labs have put the Inferno OS on Android-based phones, replacing the default Java UI. Applications are written in Limbo rather than Java. The full announcement is at the bitbucket repository, and a short video demonstrates some of its capabilities."
My fork of the Inferno OS, tweaked to run on Android
and more
The Hellaphone runs Inferno directly on top of the basic Linux layer provided by Android. We do not even allow the Java system to start. Instead, emu draws directly to the Linux framebuffer (thanks, Andrey, for the initial code!) and treats the touchscreen like a one-button mouse. Because the Java environment doesn't start, it only takes about 10 seconds to go from power off to a fully-booted Inferno environment.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
I hadn't heard of Inferno, so watched the video.
Sorry, but it was just not impressive. Seems to me Android has more interesting visuals in its robotic fingernail than Inferno on mobile has.
Seems barely better than operating a phone from a terminal session.
So I clicked the link about what Inferno is (Bell Labs' distributed computing effort), which DID sound interesting, but was hard to jive with what I'd seen on the phone.
I think it's great that new stuff is being ported to mobile devices, and like the idea of dumping Java completely from a phone, but... I don't think Inferno is ready for actual usage yet, not even for hackers.
Kudos on the effort, and I do hope it leads to more mobile options in the future, but for now, meh.
Hurr hurr.
I wish I could do the same with MeeGo.
What is inferno? I just looked at the video and same as others here, it's errr terribly small, clunky and I don't see any significant features there which would even make me consider using it?
It looks vastly worse than any of the other Android 'skins' deployed by carriers over the top to crum things up?
Can someone please explain, I honestly thought this was a joke?
Obviously you don't seem to understand this potential.
It's nether nostalgia nor a native app. Inferno is a virtualized OS and runs in top of others, or in bare bone hardware.
Looking forward to use 9P/Styx on my android phone.
Someone should do something similar to get X running on the Android kernel. Dump Java like this does and just run native X apps.
Seems like it wouldn't be hard, just need an X.org or whatever with framebuffer support. X.org might be too big though, a stripped down non-networkable X might offer better performance.
If people cannot see the potential of this... so much for slashdot being for programmers...
Its running on top of Android OS. I was expecting and hoping to see it run directly on the smartphones hardware.
Unfortunately, the sort of seamless network-agnostic computing Plan 9 and its descendants enabled is now a commercial threat to all the other players in the mobile space. Half the point of the "cloud computing" trend is to lock people in to one provider's weakly interacting web service, and, by extension, into the controlled ecosystem of third-party services that do interoperate well with it. Plan 9 is too good at what it does to be successful.
This OS is definitely not pretty, but it seems more like a functional OS than a visual "Future Look" OS. I bet all of the crazy graphics compositing and overhead of the typical Android Java VM/OS is enough to slow it down significantly. Without those I bet my phone or tablet would be seriously fast.
If the only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then you are conceding that it can't be taken on its own merits
...I write a review about Inferno OS in a newspaper:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/11296162/Inferno.jpg
Yep, it's nostalgic! ;-)
Plan 9 was an awesome idea back in the day. Inferno and Limbo both came out of it as did, i believe, the /proc filesystem for linux.
Now I have a use for his POS Inspire (I hope). Had to go back to my 3GS while I wait on the iPhone 5 and stuff that thing in a drawer. I know I should have recognized I hated it during th return period, but I was trying to like it.
"Abandon all hope, ye who port here."
...can it run Crysis? If not, can I make a Beowulf cluster of these?
Having lived with the openmoko as my only phone for nearly three years I can safely say the novelty of a community developed ui with barely functioning code for basic tasks wears off quickly. SHR was terrible to live with along with every other distribution
...But can it run Linux?
"Our country is not nearly so overrun with the bigoted as it is overrun with the broadminded." -Archbishop Fulton Sheen
Because SNOBOL wouldn't have a chance in there.
thing in the far field to the left of the phone. It looks like the video was made with a head mounted camera. Perhaps it was a hot day???
Finally, someone has created an OS for those neglected neckbeards who dislike Android and iOS because of their fancy graphics and animations.
working on nuclear bombs or some such at Sandia?
Or is this going to be the new control interface for the bombs?
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
First, I just want to give a great kudos to the Inferno developers who made this new Inferno-based Android. I am really impressed by what you guys have accomplished. For those that critizise the UI: They even mention that in the youtube video that the UI at the moment is based on Tk which is outdated. An idea that I got was that perhaps an EFL ( http://www.enlightenment.org/ ) port/binding to limbo would be the perfect match. 1) Language-wise: In contrast to its competitors GTK and QT, it is based on C rather than C++. 2) EFL already has its uses in embedded UIs, including phones. 3) Ideology-wise: EFL is permissively (BSD) licensed and fits nicely with the Android userland (Apache) and Inferno (MIT/X) licensed parts.
The fancy visuals are the bit you put on once you've screwed down the side of the case and not while the bits are all still hanging out. If you hunt around the net there are thousands of dead "projects" that are nothing but concept art because they paid almost 100% of effort to form instead of function. Once you work out what the hell you are doing you then start to have some idea of how to present it in a pleasing way to the user. Projects such as a revival of Plan9 are not yet anywhere near the point where it's know what options should be available let alone how to present them.
If it was being pushed as something finished you would have a point. It isn't so IMHO you don't.
I think what amazes me even more than getting Inferno running are the responses here and other place. How few people ( outside of the Plan 9 community ) actually seem to understand what is going on here. Even when you explain it to them.
I really thought 'geeks' were supposed to be smarter than this, but it they look more like regular users that are just wearing a pocket protector to look cool.
Rather disappointing.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
The License.... is a mix.
If it were pure GPL this would take off.
Otherwise, it's another way for someone to use your stuff for free and not give back what they do.
Quote from Wikipedia:
Inferno 4th edition was released in early 2005 as free software. Specifically, it was dual-licensed under two sets of licenses. Users could either obtain it under a set of free software licenses, or they could obtain it under a proprietary license. In the case of the free software license scheme, different parts of the system were covered by different licenses, including the GNU General Public License, the GNU Lesser General Public License, the Lucent Public License, and the MIT License. Subsequently Vita Nuova has made it possible to acquire the entire system (excluding the fonts, which are sub-licensed from Bigelow and Holmes) under the GPLv2. All three license options are currently available.
Inferno. Gotta like it.
Brings new meaning to "blazingly fast performance" Or the latest 'hot thing.'
And firewall...
And daemons...
Of course an OS that supports migrating processes from one machine to another will need some form of checking out the imported process for malware. Purgatory?
Is code 'blessed' or 'damned'
Third Career: Tree Farmer Second Career: Computer Geek First Career: Teacher, Outdoor Instructor, Photographer.
Hurray! Now the UI can be the state of the art in UI design for 1994!
Great that they got it running in some form, whether as an app overlay or something significantly more low-level, but it doesn't really interest me from a technical level, and from a practical level it's like taking the powertrain and drive train from a Model T (complete with totally different controls) to a 2007 Honda Civic.
Actually, THAT would be kind of cool =) This is "we put Who Cares? in a Who Cares?"