Inferno is an operating system for creating and supporting distributed services. The name of the operating system and of its associated programs, as well as of the company Vita Nuova that produced it, were inspired by the literary works of Dante Alighieri, particularly the Divine Comedy. Image File history File links Infernobox. ... A website (or Web site) is a collection of web pages, images, videos and other digital assets and hosted on a particular domain or subdomain on the World Wide Web. ... The term software company could be applied to; a) a company that produces software or b) a company that distributes software from a third party or c) a company that provides services for software. ... A software developer is a person who is concerned with one or more facets of the software development process, a somewhat broader scope of computer programming or a specialty of project managing. ... Bell Laboratories (also known as Bell Labs and formerly known as AT&T Bell Laboratories and Bell Telephone Laboratories) was the main research and development arm of the United States Bell System. ... For Dantes poem see La Vita Nuova article. ... Open source refers to projects that are open to the public and which draw on other projects that are freely available to the general public. ... A kernel connects the application software to the hardware of a computer. ... A software license is a legal agreement which may take the form of a proprietary or gratuitous license as well as a memorandum of contract between a producer and a user of computer software. ... The GNU logo The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL or simply GPL) is a widely-used free software license, originally written by Richard Stallman for the GNU project. ... GNU logo The GNU Lesser General Public License (formerly the GNU Library General Public License) is a free software license published by the Free Software Foundation. ... The MIT License, also called the X License or the X11 License, originated at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is a license for the use of certain types of computer software. ... An operating system (OS) is a set of computer programs that manage the hardware and software resources of a computer. ... For Dantes poem see La Vita Nuova article. ... Dante in a fresco series of famous men by Andrea del Castagno, ca. ... Dante shown holding a copy of The Divine Comedy, next to the entrance to Hell, the seven terraces of Mount Purgatory and the city of Florence, in Michelinos fresco. ...

Inferno runs in hosted mode under several different operating systems or natively on a range of hardware architectures. In each configuration the operating system presents the same standard interfaces to its applications. A communications protocol called Styx is applied uniformly to access both local and remote resources. As of the fourth edition of Inferno, Styx is identical to Plan 9's newer version of its hallmark 9P protocol, 9P2000. 9P, or the Plan 9 Filesystem Protocol, is a network protocol developed for the Plan 9 distributed operating system as the means of connecting the components of a Plan 9 system (site). ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... 9P, or the Plan 9 Filesystem Protocol, is a network protocol developed for the Plan 9 distributed operating system as the means of connecting the components of a Plan 9 system (site). ... 9P, or the Plan 9 Filesystem Protocol, is a network protocol developed for the Plan 9 distributed operating system as the means of connecting the components of a Plan 9 system (site). ...

Applications are written in the type-safe Limbo programming language, whose binary representation is identical over all platforms, and is executed using just-in-time compilation techniques in a virtual machine. In computer science, a programming language is type safe when the language does not permit the programmer to treat a value as a type to which it does not belong. ... Limbo is a programming language for writing distributed systems and is the language used to write applications for the Inferno operating system. ... In computing, just-in-time compilation (JIT), also known as dynamic translation, is a technique for improving the performance of bytecode-compiled programming systems, by translating bytecode into native machine code at runtime. ... In computer science, a virtual machine is software that creates a virtualized environment between the computer platform and its operating system, so that the end user can operate software on an abstract machine. ...

Design principles

Inferno is a distributed operating system based on three basic principles: This article or section should include material from Distributed programming This article or section should include material from Distributed system Distributed computing is the process of aggregating the power of several computing entities to collaboratively run a single computational task in a transparent and coherent way, so that they appear...

• Resources as files: all resources are represented as files within a hierarchical file system
• Namespaces: the application view of the network is a single, coherent namespace that appears as a hierarchical file system but may represent physically separated (locally or remotely) resources
• Standard communication protocol: a standard protocol, called Styx (9p2000), is used to access all resources, both local and remote

A resource, also referred to as system resource, is any physical or virtual system component of a computer system with limited availability. ... A hierarchy (in Greek hieros = sacred, arkho = rule) is a system of ranking and organizing things. ... In computing, a file system (often also written as filesystem) is a method for storing and organizing computer files and the data they contain to make it easy to find and access them. ... In general, a namespace is an abstract container, which is or could be filled by names, or technical terms, or words, and these represent (stand for) real-world things. ... 9P, or the Plan 9 Filesystem Protocol, is a network protocol developed for the Plan 9 distributed operating system as the means of connecting the components of a Plan 9 system (site). ...

Plan 9 ancestry

This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. Please discuss this issue on the talk page or replace this tag with a more specific message. This article has been tagged since June 2006.

Inferno and Plan 9 share a common ancestor, an operating system from about 1996. They share the same design principles, though there are differences: Image File history File links Broom_icon. ...

• Plan 9 userland runs native code, mostly written in C programming language with a small amount of code in assembly language, whereas Inferno userland runs through a bytecode interpreter or just-in-time compiler called Dis, mostly written in the Limbo programming language.

• The Plan 9 kernel is a hybrid kernel, whereas the Inferno kernel is an old Plan 9 kernel with unnecessary cruft stripped off and includes a virtual machine.

• The Plan 9 kernel switches between user mode (userland) and supervisor mode (kernel), whereas Inferno never leaves supervisor mode (kernel) but provides protection through the use of a virtual machine.

Inferno is somewhat similar to Java Virtual Machine. C is a general-purpose, procedural, imperative computer programming language developed in 1972 by Dennis Ritchie at the Bell Telephone Laboratories for use with the Unix operating system. ... In computing, just-in-time compilation (JIT), also known as dynamic translation, is a technique for improving the performance of bytecode-compiled programming systems, by translating bytecode into native machine code at runtime. ... Limbo is a programming language for writing distributed systems and is the language used to write applications for the Inferno operating system. ... Graphical overview of a hybrid kernel Hybrid kernels are essentially microkernels that have some non-essential machine code in the kernel address space in order for that code to run more quickly than it would were it to be in user space. ... This article does not cite its references or sources. ... In computer science, a virtual machine is software that creates a virtualized environment between the computer platform and its operating system, so that the end user can operate software on an abstract machine. ... A Java Virtual Machine (JVM), originally developed by Sun Microsystems, is a virtual machine that executes Java bytecode. ...

Ports

Inferno runs directly on native hardware and also as an application providing a virtual operating system which runs on other platforms. Applications can be developed and run on all Inferno platforms without modification or recompilation.

Native ports include: x86, MIPS, XScale, ARM, PowerPC, SPARC. x86 or 80x86 is the generic name of a microprocessor architecture first developed and manufactured by Intel. ... A MIPS R4400 microprocessor made by Toshiba. ... The XScale, a microprocessor core, is Intels implementation of the 5th generation of the ARM architecture, and consists of several distinct families: IXP, IXC, IOP, PXA and CE (see more below). ... The ARM architecture (previously, the Advanced RISC Machine, and prior to that Acorn RISC Machine) is a 32-bit RISC processor architecture that is widely used in a number of embedded designs. ... PowerPC is a RISC microprocessor architecture created by the 1991 Apple–IBM–Motorola alliance, known as AIM. Originally intended for personal computers, PowerPC CPUs have since become popular embedded and high-performance processors as well. ... Sun UltraSPARC II Microprocessor Sun UltraSPARC T1 (Niagara 8 Core) SPARC (Scalable Processor ARChitecture) is a pure big-endian RISC microprocessor instruction set architecture originally designed in 1985 by Sun Microsystems. ...

Hosted or Virtual OS ports include: Microsoft Windows, Linux, FreeBSD, Plan 9, Mac OS X, Solaris, IRIX, UnixWare. Microsoft Windows is the name of several families of proprietary software operating systems by Microsoft. ... Linux (IPA pronunciation: ) is a Unix-like computer operating system family. ... FreeBSD is a Unix-like free operating system descended from AT&T UNIX via the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD) branch through the 386BSD and 4. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... Mac OS X (official IPA pronunciation: ) is a line of proprietary, graphical operating systems developed, marketed, and sold by Apple Inc. ... Solaris is a computer operating system developed by Sun Microsystems. ... IRIX is a computer operating system developed by Silicon Graphics, Inc. ... UnixWare is a flavor of the Unix operating system. ...

Inferno can also be hosted by a plugin to Internet Explorer. According to Vita Nuova plugins for others browsers are underway.^[1] A plugin (plug-in, addin, add-in, addon or add-on) is a computer program that interacts with a main (or host) application (a web browser or an email program, for example) to provide a certain, usually very specific, function on demand. ... It has been suggested that Internet Explorer 7 be merged into this article or section. ...

Licence

Inferno 4th edition was released in early 2005 as free software. Specifically, it was dual-licensed under two sets of licences. Users can either obtain it under a set of free software licences, or they can obtain it under a mixture that includes licences that don't grant the freedoms of free software licences. The free software version uses licences such as the GNU General Public License, the GNU Lesser General Public License, the Lucent Public License, and the MIT Licence. 2005 (MMV) was a common year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar. ... This article is about free software as defined by the sociopolitical free software movement; for information on software distributed without charge, see freeware. ... // Licenses are granted by copyright holders to grant exceptions of copyright law to users for a work. ... Free software is software which grants recipients the freedom to modify and redistribute the software. ... The GNU logo The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL or simply GPL) is a widely-used free software license, originally written by Richard Stallman for the GNU project. ... GNU logo The GNU Lesser General Public License (formerly the GNU Library General Public License) is a free software license published by the Free Software Foundation. ... The Lucent Public License is an open-source license created by Lucent Technologies. ... The MIT License, originated at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is a license for the use of certain types of computer software. ...

The non-free option is for people who do not want to be bound by the copyleft requirement to "share and share alike". For the non-free option, Vita Nouva requires a mandatory per-copy fee. The reversed c in a full circle is the copyleft symbol. ...

References

1. ^ Plugins, Vita Nuova.

See also

Free software Portal

• List of Inferno applications
• Plan 9 from Bell Labs
• Singularity
• Unix
• JNode

Image File history File links Portal. ... This is a list of Inferno programs. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... Singularity is a Microsoft Research project to build a highly-dependable operating system in which the kernel, device driver, and applications are all written in managed code. ... Filiation of Unix and Unix-like systems Unix (officially trademarked as UNIX®) is a computer operating system originally developed in the 1960s and 1970s by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie and Douglas McIlroy. ... JNode (Java New Operating System Design Effort) is an open-source project to create a Java platform operating system. ...

External links

Vita Nuova

• Inferno home page
• Inferno browser plugin
• Inferno Fourth Edition Download, including source code
• Inferno design principles
• Documentation
• Mailing list and other resources
• Screenshots
• Developing with Inferno Blog
• Project on Google Code with SCM

Other links SCM is an acronym for Software Configuration Management, and relates to configuration management (CM). ...

• Unofficial FAQ
• Inferno programmer's notebook - A journal made by an Inferno user
• Inferno tutorial at the University of Reading e-Science Centre