[ruslan]

This Uxn thing reminds me Inferno[1] - a VM based operating system from Bell Labs with its own programming language, GUI and networking protocol. It can run on may hardware with just 1 MB of RAM. But Inferno is far more than that, it's a Plan9's descendant.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inferno_(operating_system)

[pjmlp]

In modern times the closest we have to Inferno is Android, which traces back to Bell Labs original goal to target Inferno against Sun's Java efforts on the market.

Pity that most Plan 9 afficionados usually always forget about Inferno, with Limbo being the re-consideration that dropping Alef from Plan 9, or designing it without automatic memory management in first place was a mistake.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alef_(programming_language)

[ruslan]

> In modern times the closest we have to Inferno is Android, which traces back to Bell Labs original goal to target Inferno against Sun's Java efforts on the market.

That's interesting, I never looked on Android at that angle. Still, Android is based on Linux (Unix), it allows JIT and NDK. Whereas Inferno does not allow escape from VM conceptually, and the whole OS, except low-level stuff, is written in Limbo and works totally in VM.

I once tried Inferno somewhere in 1998 on my PC, played with it a litte and removed. But three years later I met it in Lucent/Definity Avaya PSTN switches the company I worked for bought. Not to say I was surprised. :-)

[pjmlp]

Inferno still has C user space, check source code made available by Vita Nuova.

Like on Android it is as support for Limbo libraries and DisVM, and drivers.

Android Treble also allows for drivers to be written in Java, and ART does JIT/AOT.

[anthk]

9front/plan9 users don't forget it, they are using it in spirit with the Nc compilers, where N=arch.

On memory management, well, it always sucks, but plan9's C+lib9 it's far smaller than C99+POSIX and you have less things to worry about.

Also: https://github.com/anton2920/alef-plan9

[pjmlp]

They forget because Inferno isn't Plan 9, rather its successor, with several learnings taken into account.

[ErikAugust]

There is a reference to Inferno here: https://100r.co/site/weathering_software_winter.html