Plan 9 (operating system)

Plan 9 is an operating system descended from Unix and developed by Bell Laboratories. It is not a Unix variant, but is very similar. Plan 9 explored several "simplifications" to the original Unix model that improved the experience of using and programming the system, notably in distributed multi-user environments. Plan 9 was a Bell Labs internal project for a number of years, but a public release was made in 1993, followed by a shrink-wrapped version in 1995. Bell lost commercial interest in the project in the later 1990s, and released a third version under a non-free license (but with source code available) in 2000, and finally under a new open source license in 2002. This is the 4th, and current, edition of the system.

Related Topics:
Operating system - Unix - Bell Laboratories - 1995 - Source code - 2000 - Open source

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Rights to a derivative product, Inferno, are held by a British company, Vita Nuova. Inferno shares many of the same design concepts as Plan 9, but uses a new application programming language, Limbo, and an accompanying virtual machine, Dis. Inferno is marketed as an open source embedded operating system.

Related Topics:
Inferno - British - Vita Nuova - Programming language - Limbo - Virtual machine - Open source - Embedded operating system

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A readily installable runtime environment exists for x86, but versions of Plan 9 have run on Intel, MIPS, Alpha, SPARC, PowerPC, ARM and other architectures. The system itself is written in a dialect of ISO/ANSI C; several applications were previously written in a language called Alef, these have since been rewritten in the same C dialect. It can import POSIX applications and can emulate the Berkeley socket interface. It has complete UTF-8 support, and a windowing system called rio.

Related Topics:
X86 - Intel - MIPS - Alpha - SPARC - PowerPC - ARM - ISO - ANSI - C - Alef - POSIX - Berkeley socket interface - UTF-8

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The name comes from the scifi movie Plan 9 from Outer Space.

Related Topics:
Scifi - Plan 9 from Outer Space

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