They fixed a lot of stuff in plan 9 and it's a pleasure to tinker with. Everything is partitioned in namespaces to isolate processes. Since the entire system is

They fixed a lot of stuff in plan 9 and it's a pleasure to tinker with. Everything is partitioned in namespaces to isolate processes. Since the entire system is file system based, you manipulate the process namespace which is really just a file that lists the mounts and binds which build that namespace file system. Binds and unions are a blessing and eliminate the headache of environment variables. Every object is a file and everything is communicated via the network transparent in-kernel file protocol, 9p. And because of that, Plan 9 is fully distributed. For example: I can share the internet without a router or nat by exporting my internet facing ip stack and mount it on the machines needing net access. As far as the isp knows, a single machine is talking to it. I can do the same with file systems, file servers, network cards, sound cards, disks, usb devices, etc. It's far from usable in production and 9p is a dog over high latency links. but the ideas it has are simple yet brilliant. Best distro to check out for newcomers is 9front (they're silly fellows but don't let that fool you. serious top notch hackers that lot.)