Plan 9 from Beautiful Labs

Plane 9 from Beautiful Labs , usually called Plane 9 , is an experimental operating system developed by Bell Labs, the descendant of Unix Time-Sharing System . It is however not a Unix, in spite of the similarity of many elements. The development of a new operating system was launched because the problems of Unix were considered to be too deep to be corrected (“The problems with Unix were too deep to fix”). Its development started about 1987, whereas Unix Time-Sharing System 8 was still under development.

Unix Time-Sharing System was abandoned about 1990 when the maturity of Plan 9 did not justify any more the adaptation of Unix to an architecture of more modern computer.

Plan 9 was developed under the direction of Rob Pike and Ken Thompson, the creator of Unix Time-Sharing System. Refusals Ritchie, the creator of the language C, as of many researchers at Bell Labs contributed to it.

Plan 9 is founded on the principles of Unix, while bringing new concepts, such as the notion of the “whole network” allowing a distributed and transparent operation. Moreover, the concept of “any file”, inherited Unix, was re-examined and reinforced.

Certain things which were developed after Unix, such as the protocol TCP/IP, or the graphical interface, there were directly integrated, and form integral part of the system.

The name comes “from worst film of all times”: “Plane 9 from Outer Space” of ED Wood.

History

The development of Plan 9 began about 1987.

the first edition was made available since 1992, but only for the universities.
the 2nd edition left in 1995 pennies the form a cédérom accompanied by a handbook. It was the first version available publicly, sold 350 American dollars.
the third edition (in 2000) was the first version diffused free on Internet in the form of an image cédérom. This version was subjected to the “Plan 9 License”.
the fourth edition left in 2002.

Since 2003, Plan 9 is distributed under “Lucent Public License”. It is about a license found free by GNU and Open Source by OSI. The development of Plan 9 continues thanks to the work of Jim McKie and Russ Cox at Bell Labs and with the contribution of a community of developers. The image cédérom containing the distribution is rebuilt each night.

Specifications

Plan 9 is a very portable operating system and compilers are available for many platforms such as: Intel I386, Intel i960, Motorola MC 68000, Motorola MC 68020, DEC Alpha, MIPS, SPARC, Acorn ARM, AMD 29000 and PowerPC. It rests on a system not very common multi-process, halfway between a monolithic core and micronucleus.

The format of coding of the characters UTF-8 was invented by Ken Thompson for Plan 9 in 1992, and is thus fully supported.

It should not be forgotten that Plan 9 is an operating system of research which forever have for goal to be marketed. This also explains the choice of the names, selected to seem little salesman.

Glenda

The logo of Plan 9 represents a white rabbit named Glenda, it was drawn by the woman of Rob Pike, the artist Renee French. Its name is drawn him also from a film of ED Wood: Glen gold Glenda?.

External bonds

Plane 9 from Beautiful Plane Labs
9 Wiki
Beautiful Labs
Lucent Technologies
Page of Glenda
Site of Renee French
Maximum Security - Chapter 21 - Plan 9 from Beautiful Labs
Plane Why 9 is not dead yet And What we edge learn from it
Plane Why 9 matters
Plane 9 from To use Space (bearing of applications and libraries coming from Plan 9 towards Unix)
http://www.operating-system.org/betriebssystem/_french/bs-plan9.htm (filed Version of April 2005)

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