Very nice of you to go to lengths for describing Inferno to a non-techie.
Thank you. Just got the Fourth Edition ISO and will try it. Maybe even
learn some Limbo in long term.
--On Friday, April 17, 2009 1:55 PM +0200 [email protected] wrote:
what it is that Inferno does for a user or what a user can do
with it; what distinguishes it from other (operating?) systems. I've
decided to try it because documentation says it will readily run on
Windows.
Let's start with the fact that Inferno is a small-footprint, hosted
operating environment with its own, complete development tool set. As
such it is strictly portable across many architectures with all the
advantages of such portability as well as all the useful features
Inferno inherited from Plan 9. Not least of these is Limbo, a
programming language based on the mourned Alef and, conveniently,
interpreted by the Limbo virtual machine, not dissimilar from, but
much better thought out than the JAVA virtual machine.
You can pile on any number of additional great attributes of Inferno
and Limbo that make them highly useful. There is also the option to
run Inferno natively on some architectures (I've never dug any deeper
than the PC for this, so off the top of my head I can provide no
exciting examples) with all the drawbacks of needing device drivers
for all sorts of inconsiderate platforms.
In a way, I guess Inferno is a slightly different Plan 9 with built-in
virtualisation for a wide range of platforms. But the differences are
notable even if the philosophy is the same between the two
environment.
++L
