Inferno (operating system)

Inferno is a distributed computer operating system originated by Bell Laboratories.

Inferno is based on Plan 9, an operating system that follows the Unix philosophy that all communication with the operating system must be done via files. Among others, the developers Rob Pike and Dennis Ritchie were responsible for the original design of Inferno.

Inferno is written in the C programming language. For programming application programs, however, the Limbo language is used, which, like Java, produces bytecode that is executed by a virtual machine. Inferno has minimal hardware requirements: it runs on systems without a Memory Management Unit and with only 1 MB of RAM.

Each user program communicates with its environment via virtual files, which can represent devices, process information, network connection points, etc. in addition to normal files. They can be accessed locally as well as over the network via a common protocol, Styx. The protocol allows file hierarchy traversal (walk 'run') and classic file operations such as read and write. Access to devices is accomplished via filenames such as /dev/mouse (mouse) or /dev/screen (monitor). The screen and mouse can be on a different machine, and access is transparent over the network. Each application sees its own version of a file or device. For example, /dev/mouse only sends data to the application program when the corresponding window is active.

Inferno, like Unix in the 1970s, comes with a full development environment including a C compiler. It runs as a stand-alone operating system on computers with various processors such as x86, Intel XScale, IBM PowerPC, PA-RISC, ARM StrongARM, MIPS and Sun SPARC. In addition, it can also run on a host system such as Linux (x86), FreeBSD, Solaris or Plan 9, and experimentally on Android smartphones. It even runs under Microsoft Internet Explorer with the help of a plug-in. Since the bytecode of the Limbo applications is the same for every architecture, Inferno applications can run everywhere without recompilation.

Inferno is distributed and further developed by Vita Nuova Inc., York, England since 2000. The source code is available with a GPL-like license.