Inferno

Inferno is a distributed operating system originally made by Bell Labs, but is now maintained by Vita Nuova. Inferno's primary use is its programming environment for the Limbo programming language. Inferno is open-source under the LGPL, MIT, and GPL licenses.

FUN FACT: The operating system's name was inspired by Dante Alighieri's "Divine Comedy". Many other applications and utilities have names that reference Dante's works.

Inferno is neither Unix or POSIX like. Rather, Inferno is the predecessor to Plan 9.

Inferno is not a typical operating system. Rather, its kernel contains an on-the-fly Limbo compiler and a Limbo interpreter. On top of the kernel lies a virtual machine called "dis" that can run on a pre-existing OS (such as Linux, Windows, Plan 9, FreeBSD, etc.). In addition, Inferno can run in Internet Explorer as a plug-in. Inferno is highly portable and works on many platforms such as ARM, MIPS, PowerPC, x86, and others. Many of Inferno's programs are written in Limbo.

Limbo is a programming language that is similar to C. However, Limbo is executed by the Inferno Virtual Machine, which is a Just-In-Time (JIT) compiler. Limbo applications are capable of running on many architectures since the binary representation of the data is identical over all platforms.

Inferno is meant to be used for networking environments or for the use of Limbo. Inferno's low memory requirements (1MB of memory) and its ability to run on many types of processors makes it easy to use Inferno on a variety of systems.

Inferno has three shells (sh, tiny sh, and mash) and supports a GUI by using its windowing system (called "wm").

Further Reading

• Official Inferno Website - http://www.vitanuova.com/inferno/
• Plan 9 - https://dcjtech.info/topic/plan-9/
• General Computer Topics (Article Index) - https://dcjtech.info/topic/general-computer-topics/
• ChibiOS/RT - https://dcjtech.info/topic/chibiosrt/
• Contiki - https://dcjtech.info/topic/contiki/
• FreeRTOS - https://dcjtech.info/topic/freertos-safertos-and-family/
• GNU eCos - https://dcjtech.info/topic/gnu-ecos/
• GNU-Hurd - https://dcjtech.info/topic/intro-to-gnu-hurd/
• KolibriOS - https://dcjtech.info/topic/kolibrios/
• Solaris - https://dcjtech.info/topic/intro-to-solaris/
• TRON - https://dcjtech.info/topic/tron-the-operating-system/