The 9front project has presented the release of the operating system 9front 10931, published under the code name “This Time Definitely”. Developed since 2011 by Bell Labs, the 9front project is a distributed operating system based on Plan 9. Installation assemblies for architectures i386, x86_64, and Raspberry Pi 1-4 are available here. The code is distributed under the MIT license and a dedicated musical composition has been released alongside the new version.
The core concept of PLAN 9 revolves around erasing the distinctions between local and remote resources, creating a distributed environment with three key principles: all resources as a hierarchical set of files, equal access to local and external resources, and each process having its own changeable name space. The 9p protocol is utilized to establish a unified distributed hierarchy of resources files.
Notable features of FORK 9FRONT include additional protection mechanisms, expanded hardware support, enhanced wireless network functionality, new file systems, sound subsystem implementation, audio codec support, USB support, the Mothra web browser, bootloader and initialization system upgrades, disk data encryption, Unicode support, Real address emulator, AMD64 and 64-bit address space compatibility.
Major changes in the latest release include:
- The installer now includes the gefs file system, designed specifically for PLAN 9. GEFS supports snapshots and is optimized for fast file reloading in large directories. It ensures data integrity during failures and has self-diagnostic capabilities to prevent data corruption. GEFS is fully compatible with the traditional 9P file system, using Copy-On-Write mode and Bε-Tree structure.
- IP and IPCONFIG utilities have added support for dynamic IP