/sys/doc/ Documentation archive

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.

• Plan 9 First Edition
  • 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

• Plan 9 Second Edition
  • The "README" by Brian Kernighan - somewhat outdated, but still relevant today.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.

• Plan 9 Third Edition
  • Rio: Design of a Concurrent Window System.

• Plan 9 Fourth Edition Papers.

• 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

Links

• Official Plan 9 website at Bell Labs.
• The Plan 9 Wiki.
• Plan 9 from User Space - A port of Plan 9 userspace to Unix/Linux systems.
• Plan 9 Kernel History.
• Glenda's Lair.