Plan 9 from Bell Labs is a free software distributed operating system. It was developed primarily for research purposes as the successor to Unix by the Computing Sciences Research Center at Bell Labs between the mid-1980s and 2002. Plan 9 continues to be used and developed by operating system researchers and hobbyists.
Plan 9 has novel features such as the 9P protocol for accessing local and remote resources as files, union mounts, an improved proc file system, and native unicode support throughout the system. In Plan 9, all system interfaces, including those required for networking and the user interface, are represented through the file system rather than specialized interfaces.
The name Plan 9 from Bell Labs is a reference to the Ed Wood 1959 cult science fiction Z-movie Plan 9 from Outer Space. Also, Glenda, the Plan 9 Bunny, is presumably a reference to Wood's film Glen or Glenda.
Read more about Plan 9 From Bell Labs: History, Design Concepts, Combining The Design Concepts, Software For Plan 9, UNIX Compatibility, Impact, License
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