Re: [9fans] ... from Inferno...

["Michael Jeffrey" <michael@vitanuova.com>]

> Inferno is to Plan 9 as Java is to Windoze ;-) as I understand it
> Plan 9 is OS, but inferno is a layer above OS that runs on that (or
other[?]) OS.

This is a common misconception.  Inferno is an operating system and, like
Plan 9 and most other operating systems, can run as the native OS
on bare hardware.  A fairly wide range of architectures are supported, have
a look
at http://www.vitanuova.com/solutions/embedded/index.html.

Unlike other OSes however, Inferno can also run as an application on top of
an
existing OS; which is what you referred to above.  Inferno in this case does
not
manage the hardware directly but through services provided by the underlying
OS.

The important thing however is that in both cases system resources are
presented
in precisely the same way irrespective of whether Inferno is managing the
hardware
or running on top of another platform.

The way resources are represented (namespaces) is shared with Plan 9 and the
protocol
for communication with resources is also shared.  Plan 9 came first.

To take full advantage of Inferno's portability across hardware
architectures and OS
platforms you, ideally, would like portable applications.  The Limbo
language
within Inferno provides this application portability.  Limbo is a
concurrent, modular
programming language that has a C-like syntax.  The byte code representing a
compiled Limbo program is portable to any platform on which Inferno is
running.
If you like, Limbo is to Inferno what Java would have been to JavaOS if it
had
existed.