Plan 9

Plan 9
 n.

   In the late 1980s, researchers at Bell Labs (especially Rob Pike of
   Kernighan & Pike fame) got bored with the limitations of UNIX and
   decided to reimplement the entire system. The result was called Plan 9
   in "the Bell Labs tradition of selecting names that make marketeers
   wince." The developers also wished to pay homage to the famous film,
   "Plan 9 From Outer Space", considered by some to be the worst movie
   ever made. The source is available for download under open-source
   terms. The developers and a small fan base hang out at comp.os.plan9,
   where one can occasionally hear "If you want UNIX, you know where to
   find it"
    

Plan 9

   <operating system> (Named after the classically bad,
   exceptionally low-budget SF film "Plan 9 from Outer Space") An
   {operating system} developed at {Bell Labs} by many
   researchers previously intimately involved with {Unix}.

   Plan 9 is superficially Unix-like but features far finer
   control over the {name-space} (on a per-process basis) and is
   inherently distributed and scalable.

   Plan 9 is divided according to service functions.  {CPU}
   servers concentrate computing power into large
   {multiprocessors}; {file servers} provide repositories for
   storage and terminals give each user of the system a dedicated
   computer with {bitmap screen} and {mouse} on which to run a
   window system.  The sharing of computing and file storage
   services provides a sense of community for a group of
   programmers, amortises costs and centralises and hence
   simplifies management and administration.

   The pieces communicate by a single {protocol}, built above a
   reliable {data transport layer} offered by an appropriate
   network, that defines each service as a rooted tree of files.
   Even for services not usually considered as files, the unified
   design permits some simplification.  Each process has a local
   file name space that contains attachments to all services the
   process is using and thereby to the files in those services.
   One of the most important jobs of a terminal is to support its
   user's customised view of the entire system as represented by
   the services visible in the name space.

   (http://plan9.bell-labs.com/plan9dist/).

   (2005-02-15)