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Maybe use and hack on Inferno? It's a VM which runs over Windows, Linux, and MacOS, and provides a stripped-down unixy environment evolved from Plan 9. The en

Maybe use and hack on Inferno? It's a VM which runs over Windows, Linux, and MacOS, and provides a stripped-down unixy environment evolved from Plan 9. The entire OS and VM is compiled from source, it's a relatively small and efficient codebase, and you learn some newer OS ideas along the way. It's written in the programming language Limbo, which is sort of half-way between C and Go. (There's a book on systems programming in Inferno with Limbo to help you along.) Best of all, when you mess something up, you can just fall back to your host OS, so you can try more. (And don't worry about upgrades, the latest full release was in 2004.;)

carlesfe 14y ago
I already know about Inferno, but unfortunately, it's an experiment and can't be used on a daily basis. Some of the underlying ideas are great, though!
- catenate 14y ago
  shrug I use it on a daily basis, over top of Linux, mostly. I've used Wily/Acme-SAC/Acme as my programming and OS interface for the past 10 years (2003-), after 11 years of Emacs (1992-2003). Both systems are completely reprogrammable, and Inferno has the advantage of being an actual OS (as opposed to a kitchen sink). I recommend it because it's a good way to get the feeling that you know the whole system, which you seem to be interested in, like the early home computers. I think the major three OSes are a little too big and bloated to get the same feel. Also, since it's a VM, you can take it around to other machines, and share it with other people, without changing the base OS they use.
  - carlesfe 14y ago
    Thanks for the tip, but it's not what I aim for. You say you use Inferno over Linux. It's my daily linux apps I would want to tweak: Firefox, mutt, vim, eog, etc. I don't want to learn about operating systems... I just want to hack my daily apps. Thanks again, I might try to hack Inferno itself. I ran it on a VM some months ago and it seemed nice.

carlesfe 14y ago

I already know about Inferno, but unfortunately, it's an experiment and can't be used on a daily basis. Some of the underlying ideas are great, though!

catenate 14y ago
shrug I use it on a daily basis, over top of Linux, mostly. I've used Wily/Acme-SAC/Acme as my programming and OS interface for the past 10 years (2003-), after 11 years of Emacs (1992-2003). Both systems are completely reprogrammable, and Inferno has the advantage of being an actual OS (as opposed to a kitchen sink). I recommend it because it's a good way to get the feeling that you know the whole system, which you seem to be interested in, like the early home computers. I think the major three OSes are a little too big and bloated to get the same feel. Also, since it's a VM, you can take it around to other machines, and share it with other people, without changing the base OS they use.
- carlesfe 14y ago
  Thanks for the tip, but it's not what I aim for. You say you use Inferno over Linux. It's my daily linux apps I would want to tweak: Firefox, mutt, vim, eog, etc. I don't want to learn about operating systems... I just want to hack my daily apps. Thanks again, I might try to hack Inferno itself. I ran it on a VM some months ago and it seemed nice.