UNIX, Plan9, Inferno

Readings

Dennis M. Ritchie and Ken Thompson, "The UNIX Time-Sharing System"

Rob Pike et al., "Plan 9 from Bell Labs"

Sean Dorward et al., "The Inferno Operating System"

Rob Pike and Dennis M. Ritchie, "The Styx Architecture for Distributed Systems"

Questions on the Readings

1. How did the thinking of Rob Pike, Dennis Ritchie, and the rest of the OS researchers at Bell Labs change over time? Specifically, what ideas did they throw away, and what new ideas came to replace them?
2. What ideas remained consistent across UNIX, Plan 9, and Inferno?
3. Why didn't Plan 9 or Inferno have the success of UNIX?
4. What was the impact of Plan 9 and Inferno?
5. How does the Styx architecture compare with the architectures of other distributed OSs we've been studying?
6. What does Styx ^not^ capture about the design of UNIX, Plan 9, or Inferno?
7. Is the view of "everything is a file" still relevant today, or are other approaches (e.g. object-oriented interfaces) more suitable? Why?