Can someone explain the main differences between Plan 9 OS and Inferno? Why should I use one of them?
Inferno Raspberry Pi image – beta release
11–20 of 29 posts
Re: Inferno Raspberry Pi image – beta release
#12Can someone explain the main differences between Plan 9 OS and Inferno? Why should I use one of them?
plan 9 is the earlier effort of re-engineering Unix and runs on hardware. It was meant to replace Unix, but it never did.
With inferno they went the VM route (the dis VM) and built it so that it runs on myriad platforms, from Unix and ActiveX. It still runs on hardware though. The intension was that you can run a network of hosted and native inferno installations, making it easier to adopt. Unfortunately, inferno saw no widespread adoption either.
The underlying filesystem concept is basically the same (the latest version of 9p and Styx are identical), but the programming environment changed a lot (you write limbo to run on dis). Also the user space programs were rewritten and get overhauled a bit. The community never get divergent enough though; inferno people tend to identify themselves as part of the plan 9 community.
Re: Inferno Raspberry Pi image – beta release
#13Can someone explain the main differences between Plan 9 OS and Inferno? Why should I use one of them?
Answering the second question: you won't want to use it in production, but if you have ever been intrigued by one of those Unix philosophy preaches, you should definitely take a look at it. It takes the tool philosophy (build simple tools that are easy to combine) and filesystem metaphor much further, besides addressing some (albeit not all) long-standing Unix WTFs.
Plan 9 is not the most elegant design of OSes, but its simple ways of combing primitives are pretty amazing. Simplicity is underappreciated nowadays.
Re: Inferno Raspberry Pi image – beta release
#14Can someone explain the main differences between Plan 9 OS and Inferno? Why should I use one of them?
plan 9 is the earlier effort of re-engineering Unix and runs on hardware. It was meant to replace Unix, but it never did. With inferno they went the VM route (the dis VM) and built it so that it runs on myriad platforms, from Unix and ActiveX. It still runs on hardware though. The intension was that you can run a network of hosted and native inferno installations, making it easier to adopt. Unfortunately, inferno saw…
With most of the inferno team working for Google; I wonder why android hasn't adopted any of inferno's technology.
Re: Inferno Raspberry Pi image – beta release
#15Hello i would like to try that in virtualbox since I don't have a RPI. How one would go to load an .img file in virtualbox ? Should I try to convert it to some .iso and boot with it ?
Re: Inferno Raspberry Pi image – beta release
#16Earlier quoted context omitted.
plan 9 is the earlier effort of re-engineering Unix and runs on hardware. It was meant to replace Unix, but it never did. With inferno they went the VM route (the dis VM) and built it so that it runs on myriad platforms, from Unix and ActiveX. It still runs on hardware though. The intension was that you can run a network of hosted and native inferno installations, making it easier to adopt. Unfortunately, inferno saw…
With most of the inferno team working for Google; I wonder why android hasn't adopted any of inferno's technology.
Most likely, because at the beginning the Android team got a few well known Sun/JVM expatriates on their architecture team, like Chet Haase and Romain Guy among others.
Does anyone from Plan 9/Inferno work on the Android team at all?
Re: Inferno Raspberry Pi image – beta release
#17Earlier quoted context omitted.
plan 9 is the earlier effort of re-engineering Unix and runs on hardware. It was meant to replace Unix, but it never did. With inferno they went the VM route (the dis VM) and built it so that it runs on myriad platforms, from Unix and ActiveX. It still runs on hardware though. The intension was that you can run a network of hosted and native inferno installations, making it easier to adopt. Unfortunately, inferno saw…
With most of the inferno team working for Google; I wonder why android hasn't adopted any of inferno's technology.
Well, Rob Pike created Go based on Limbo. This language becomes more and more popular. It is not in Android, but Google actively use it (probably in Google Play too).
Re: Inferno Raspberry Pi image – beta release
#18Hello i would like to try that in virtualbox since I don't have a RPI. How one would go to load an .img file in virtualbox ? Should I try to convert it to some .iso and boot with it ?
Are you very specifically interested in running an ARM port targeted at the Raspberry Pi? If you just want to try Inferno or Plan 9 generally, try:
Re: Inferno Raspberry Pi image – beta release
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
plan 9 is the earlier effort of re-engineering Unix and runs on hardware. It was meant to replace Unix, but it never did. With inferno they went the VM route (the dis VM) and built it so that it runs on myriad platforms, from Unix and ActiveX. It still runs on hardware though. The intension was that you can run a network of hosted and native inferno installations, making it easier to adopt. Unfortunately, inferno saw…
With most of the inferno team working for Google; I wonder why android hasn't adopted any of inferno's technology.
Most of the team? I only know that Rob Pike and Russ Cox are Google employers. And I have the impression that they are working mostly on Golang and some distributed infrastructures. Did they employ any other inferno developers?
Re: Inferno Raspberry Pi image – beta release
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
With most of the inferno team working for Google; I wonder why android hasn't adopted any of inferno's technology.
Most of the team? I only know that Rob Pike and Russ Cox are Google employers. And I have the impression that they are working mostly on Golang and some distributed infrastructures. Did they employ any other inferno developers?
Thompson, Pressotto, Weinberger, I think (?). Not sure they'd want to work on Infernoogle anyways after so long...