From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Date: Fri, 17 Apr 2009 11:24:38 +0100 From: Eris Discordia To: Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs <9fans@9fans.net> Message-ID: In-Reply-To: <21493d85b69b070fed0a4f864eb5325a@proxima.alt.za> References: <21493d85b69b070fed0a4f864eb5325a@proxima.alt.za> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Subject: Re: [9fans] security questions Topicbox-Message-UUID: e00f17c6-ead4-11e9-9d60-3106f5b1d025 I see. Thanks for the edification :-) I found--still find--it hard to understand what Inferno is/does. Actually read but it isn't very direct about what it is that Inferno does for a user or what a user can do with it; what distinguishes it from other (operating?) systems. I've decided to try it because documentation says it will readily run on Windows. As a side note, I found a short passage in the Inferno paper that confirmed something I had pointed out previously on this list in almost identical wording (and been ridiculed for): > The Styx protocol lies above and is independent of the communications > transport layer; it is readily carried over TCP/IP, PPP, ATM or various > modem transport protocols. --On Friday, April 17, 2009 11:47 AM +0200 lucio@proxima.alt.za wrote: >> I don't know what Inferno is but the phrase 'virtual machine' appears >> somewhere in the product description. Isn't Inferno the 'it' you're >> searching for? > > No, Inferno resembles - very superficially, as you will discover if > you study the literature - a JAVA interpreter surrounded by its own > operating system. There are so many clever things about Inferno, it > is hard to do it justice. But it is not a virtualiser. More's the > pity, of course. A virtualiser with Inferno's good features would be > a very useful device. > > Actually, I have long had a feeling that there is a convergence of > VNC, Drawterm, Inferno and the many virtualising tools (VMware, Xen, > Lguest, etc.), but it's one of these intuition things that I cannot > turn into anything concrete. > > ++L > >