From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu Date: Sat, 23 Sep 2000 08:56:11 +0000 From: "Douglas A. Gwyn" Message-ID: <39CC6C8C.7D1B08CB@null.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit References: <969693940.635831@news> Subject: [9fans] Re: Plan 9 or Inferno, which ot choose? Topicbox-Message-UUID: 0bd86daa-eac9-11e9-9e20-41e7f4b1d025 Alexander L wrote: > Another questions, when do we need plan 9 and Inferno? They seem like > the same thing but I feel there's a difference between them. There are similarities in some ways and differences in others. The main difference is the environment intended for the systems. Plan 9 is meant for use by humans in a full interactive development environment, while Inferno is meant for embedded appliances. That difference pretty much determined the difference in their implementation. For example, Inferno expects all applications to be developed in a single language (Limbo) which is compiled into a universal object code (byte code) that is then interpreted in a variety of different devices running Inferno, while on Plan 9 each target architecture has its own native object code and an application has to be compiled anew for each new platform.