

Inferno (Bell Labs' Plan 9 Successor) - wwrap
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Inferno_%28operating_system%29

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sophacles
Tangentially:

I've begun to suspect that soon we will see a new era of operating systems due
to the wide proliferation of virtual machines. Since so many things are
running in VMs these days, and since most VM software provides a
standardized/simplified view of peripherals, it is an area that would seem
ripe for re-specialization.

Why have an operating system that only runs one app of importance have
codepaths and resources dedicated to super-efficient forking? Why not have a
network stack optimized for what is essentially routing (think http proxies or
queue servers)? Why not an operating system with an FS focused on record
storage and record searching (databases of most variety)? Actor model built
into a distributed operating system -- sure, seems reasonable, and fairly
straight-forward, and more efficient than throwing a runtime on top of the OS
to redo a bunch of stuff, or get around it.

One of the big problems of operating systems was always getting enough people
to use them on the wildly varying hardware to really justify good
portability... VMs seem to help reduce that.

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wwrap
A few posts about and bringing up Plan 9 have been around HN recently, but I
haven't seen a single person bring up Inferno.

Is it because it isn't well known? Or is there some obvious deficiency that
everyone but me knows about?

