Re: [9fans] this is not an advocacy question

[geoff@collyer.net]

The Inferno kernel was created by modifying a then-current Plan 9
kernel.  I believe that they do share device drivers, but the
Vitanuova folks can probably answer that better than I can.

See the Plan 9 and Inferno manuals and nemo's Plan 9 3rd edition
kernel commentary for design and implementation papers.

I believe that the current Styx will interoperate with 9P2000, but
haven't tried it myself.

Limbo is an attractive language in its own right, more so for
concurrent applications than the lower-level uses of C.  Its facilities
for writing concurrent programs are far more pleasant than something
like Posix pthreads.

Portability doesn't strike me as a basis for choosing Limbo (on
Inferno) over C on Plan 9.  Both rely on the portability of the
underlying operating system.

Given that you're unlikely to have the right hardware to usefully run
native Inferno, you'll have to run Inferno hosted on some other
operating system, so that might was well be Plan 9.  Then you can try
them both.