Harvey is an effort to get the Plan 9 code working with gcc and clang. According to the team: “Our aim is to provide a modern, distributed, 64 bit operating system that does away with Unix’s wrinkles and allows for new ways of working. At this point we have an AMD 64 bit kernel with many changes and improvements. For example, a new modern, simplified syscall system. We use gdb to investigate problems and we can compile in Linux or OSX using Harvey’s headers and libs; no need to change anything else. It’s fast compiling the whole system and boots quickly. Though we are working in many other features, all Plan 9 traditional userland is available. At this moment, we are working to move console and mouse out of kernel, ttyfs file server in user space, and improved ANSI/POSIX environment where gcc or clang can live, and we plan to add X11 with rio-like multiplexing, bash and other shells and many other well known things that people want in their machines. We are focusing in server set up for now, but keeping in mind end-user. All of this, of course, keeping classic and beautiful distributed features of old Plan 9.”
I take it it’s Harvey like the giant rabbit that followed Jimmy Stewart? I like it. Glenda is a little, cute rabbit, Harvey is a human-sized one.
Edit: OK, I checked, it is. I prefer this to Darko OS
Edited 2015-07-17 17:41 UTC
looks good. I hope they do well building a compat layer of some sort to get all the existing posix stuff working. Plan9 is sort of what unix really wanted to be, but came out too late and had to compete with unix.
bnolsen,
I feel plan9 had merit to win out over unix, since it was better designed, with better abstractions. Sadly even if people like you and me can say it was objectively better than alternatives, ultimately it was too late and couldn’t fight the tide.
http://www.karlsweb.com/KarlswebNewscape/images/Magazines/HarveySci…
I couldn’t help myself there
Had AT&T not kept a strangle hold on Unix… it could have dominated in the late 80’s and probably would have ended up being much more user friendly.
Plan 9 isn’t even on the radar of user friendliness… sometimes you need to take your failures in stride start over and take the good parts with you. Basically… Plan 9 sucks UI wise and is completely foreign.
Also tying your OS to 64bit or 32bit is a mark of being crappy and slack in my book. Being 64Bit only is a bug IMO just as being 32bit only is.
Edited 2015-07-18 20:57 UTC
cb88,
The plan9 website is badly in need of maintenance with most links being dead and only a 64bit image available for download…but if you compile it yourself are you sure it wouldn’t work? It shows x86 compatibility on the wikipedia page.
I don’t know that requiring 64bit is such a bad thing. Very few os’s today will run on 16bit anymore, much less on 8bit. ARM is lagging in 64bit uptake but should be common soon enough.