Plan 9 from Bell Labs
Plan 9 is a distributed research operating system developed at Bell Labs by the same team that created Unix and C. Over the years there have been four major releases or ‘Editions’; after the Fourth Edition the project adopted a ‘open source’ model and changes are published daily in a public repository.
Here is a mirror of the papers describing the system, including components from past ‘Editions’ that while not maintained anymore might be of historical interest.
Fourth (and latest) Edition:
Plan 9 Third Edition:
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- The “README” by Brian Kernighan - somewhat outdated, but still relevant today.
- The ALEF users guide by Bob Flandrena
- Alef Language Reference Manual by Phil Winterbottom
- A Quick Introduction to the Panel Library by Tom Duff - used by the Mothra web browser
- Raster Graphics in plan9 by Tom Duff - Ironically obsoleted the adoption in 3rd Edition of the Porter/Duff graphics model.
- The Second Edition Manual Pages
- plan9.att.com - Mirror of the official website back in the 2nd Ed days.
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- Designing Plan 9 - Bell Labs' Plan 9 research project looks to tomorrow by Rob Pike, Dave Presotto, Ken Thompson, and Howard Trickey.
- Help: A Minimalist Global User Interface by Rob Pike.
- Circuit Design Aids (CDA) on Plan 9 by A. G. Hume, M. Kahrs, T. J. Killian.
- The complete Plan 9 from Bell Labs Programmer’s Manual First Edition: pdf and PostScript
Other documents not tied to any specific edition:
- Real Time Plan 9.
- Papers from the International Workshops for Plan 9 and Inferno.
- Plan 9 on IBM’s Blue Gene Supercomputer - Papers, posters and other documents.
See also
- Inferno - The ‘successor’ of Plan 9 and a very complementary system.
- A New C Compiler (for Plan 9) by Ken Thompson.
- The Blit: A Multiplexed Graphics Terminal by Rob Pike - A predecesor of 81/2 and rio.
- Upas - a simpler approach to network mail by David L. Presotto - The MTA used in Plan 9 and Research Unix 10th Edition.
- UTF-8 History - The tale of how Rob Pike and Ken Thompson invented UTF-8 and converted Plan 9 to use it everywhere in a few days.
- Notes on Programming in C by Rob Pike.
- Resources for the Sam and Acme text editors.
Links
- Official Plan 9 website at Bell Labs.
- Plan 9 from User Space - A port of Plan 9 userspace to Unix/Linux systems.
- Plan 9 Kernel History.
- Glenda’s Lair.
- 9grid.fr - The French 9grid node.