Computing Atlas

How Computing Was Built
Sign In
Text size
100%
Theme
System

Inferno (operating system)

Operating System

Inferno is an MIT licensed distributed operating system that Bell Labs began building in 1995 and first released in 1996, designed to let applications and resources work consistently across many kinds of hardware and network environments. After Lucent Technologies closed the Bell Labs research center that had built it in 2005, Vita Nuova Holdings acquired the system and continued its development, and its 32 bit line is now maintained by Terzarima Systems alongside a separately maintained 64 bit fork called Inferno64. Applications for Inferno are written in Limbo, a type-safe language that compiles to architecture-independent bytecode run by the Dis virtual machine, so the same program runs unchanged on every Inferno platform. Inferno descends from Plan 9 from Bell Labs, sharing many of its design ideas and some of its source code, including the Styx/9P2000 protocol, and it represents both local and remote resources as files inside hierarchical namespaces to support distributed applications. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

Facts
Classification
License
MIT 1
Status
Status
Active / In Use 1
Year
1996 1
FAQs

How can the same Inferno program run on different kinds of hardware?

A Limbo program is compiled to Dis virtual machine code that runs the same on every Inferno platform.

Inferno applications are written in Limbo, which is compiled into architecture independent code for the Dis virtual machine. Because every Inferno system presents the same environment to applications, a program runs identically on all Inferno platforms, whatever the host operating system or processor underneath. Dis code can be interpreted directly, which saves space, or compiled on the fly for the target processor, which saves time, and the choice can be made at run time for each module.

Does Inferno run only as its own operating system?

It can run stand alone or as an application on top of another operating system.

No. Inferno can run as a stand alone operating system or as a user application on top of an existing operating system. Its developers list hosts such as Windows NT, Linux, MacOS X, FreeBSD, Solaris and Plan 9, and processor architectures including ARM, Intel x86, PowerPC and SPARC. Each Inferno system presents the same environment to its applications either way.
Connections

In Field

Source Wikipedia: Inferno (operating system)

Licensed Under

MIT License, Concepts
In the Other Atlases

Developed By

Also in Business Atlas: the developer of this subject.

Sources
1. Wikipedia: Inferno (operating system)
  • Infobox: working_state
    ;Inferno: Current; No paid support available Inferno64: Current
  • Infobox: released
    ;Inferno: Bell Labs Release 1996 Inferno64: 2022
  • In Field: Operating Systems, Lead paragraph
View the Source
Comments (0)
No comments yet. Be the first to share a thought.
Reader Challenges (0)
No disputes yet. Spotted an error or a better source? Open the first one.