Inferno OS for Raspberry Pi | Hacker News Reader

Inferno OS for Raspberry Pi

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140 pointsrcarmo20 comments

What are the major differences between (the latest versions of) Unix, Plan 9 and Inferno? Is there anything that Inferno and/or Plan 9 do that would be harder to achieve with a Unix-based system?

I think people like plan9 more for it's minimalism rather than for it's special features.

Also, there still isn't anything quite like 9p for other OSes. Although many of them can mount 9p filesystems it doesn't match the VFS very well so it doesn't make a lot of sense to share device files. FUSE matches Linux's VFS closely but lacks authentication support so it isn't useful over a network without a special wrapper. Furthermore, a lot of these OSes rely on the setuid bit for a number of things which you can't have in an OS like plan9.

That whole OS is just very different, it's not easy to emulate on something like Linux.

Responsiveness and device expansion would be two such things.

Inferno OS is built around the Dis virtual machine, which is akin to a JVM. Unix-like OSs are native-code oriented.

HN has previously discussed this question of where 'grand abstractions' should reside - in the OS, or above? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9807777

To quote from that old thread (they discuss Taos not Inferno, but the distinctions from Unix are similar):

> could you efficiently implement Taos abstractions on top of POSIX? (probably yes) Could you efficiently implement POSIX abstractions on top of Taos? (probably no)

Thank you for your response, but I'm thinking perhaps I didn't explain the reason why I was asking. I understand that Inferno has a different design based on a VM, what I'm trying to ascertain is... why is it better than what came before? The design decisions were more than likely based on a desire to improve on what came before, my questions are about what the designers seeked to improve. In other words, rather than knowing it's a different design, I'd like to know why it's a better design (or to be more fair, what are its strengths and weaknesses)?

Plan9 (and Inferno, the virtualised descendent thereof) embody a single, unifying abstraction: that everything is a file. This often stated in Unix but (beyond the /dev and on Linux /proc & /sys filesystems) there’s lots of things that aren’t files (the framebuffer, network sockets...). In Plan9 and Inferno if you want to do something to anything all you need to do is know fopen & company.

Delighted by this. I’ve always appreciated Plan 9 and its derivative Inferno. It’s a pity they never gained much of a toehold.

Me too, it also saddens me that many aren't aware of Inferno OS and always think Plan 9 was the end of the line, when that status actually belongs to Inferno OS.

Which implemented the original vision for Plan 9, regarding what Pike wanted to do with Alef.

Surprised someone didn't make an Android competitor with Inferno OS. It was already part way there to being a mobile OS.

The Hellaphone was an idea in that direction. They substituted all the Java bits in Android with Inferno: http://jfloren.net/b/2015/8/18/2

Too bad they didn't continue its development. Probably choosing a different GUI than TK would have helped to spark more people's interest in the project. There's a huge need for an alternative OS on Android phones, but most of the people who would benefit from it don't know that, so that need doesn't translate to actual demand.

What's wrong with Tk, exactly?

Everything and nothing, depending if you're a hacker or a common user.

Actually, it's pretty bad for both. It's both ugly (which users hate) and a pain to develop for if you want to do anything slightly unconventional.

The pain of developing it was one reason I didn't do much with Hellaphone after that summer. Other reasons: lack of funding and no spare phone to use if I wanted to develop it on my own time.

I don't see Tk as being a problem. Rio, however, and the continued reliance upon 3-button mice, dates both Plan9 and Inferno and makes it quite hard to use them on laptops with trackpads.

what's wrong with three button mice? virtualy all pc's outwith macs that use mac mice use three button mouse's

Emulating three buttons on a trackpad (or touchscreen) is hard to do right. I don’t use mice on my laptops.

ah I see what you mean I mostly used desktops hadn't thought about ipads and the like

"part way there", but certainly still a long way to go. even only because people want slick ui's, not a strong point of plan 9/inferno.

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