9front is the community fork of the OS that the creators of UNIX and C did next.

This is what Dennis Ritchie and Ken Thompson did to fix the faults in the Unix design.

Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, and all the other FOSS Unix-like OSes are community recreations of the flawed AT&T Unix.

9front is the continuation of the OS that came next.

I daily drive 9front.

The historical emergence answers here are fine as far as they go, but they're a bit like saying that Linux is an OS developed by Linus to help him learn x86.

IMO 9front is an exposé of what an OS can look like when it's written for and by hackers with a focus on simplicity. The YouTube channel adventuresin9[0] parades some nice examples of what real world usage looks like.

For example, since everything is just a file, you tunnel traffic with a simple bind mount. Since everything is just text, small regexes suffice to route mouse clicks to UI actions. Since windows are just buffers, grepping history is grepping the window's text buffer; taking a screenshot is just cp-ing the window's draw buffer.

Oh, and 9front C diverges from the standard intentionally in some nice ways: evaluation of function args is sequenced, anonymous unions like

    struct {
      int a;
      union {
        uint i;
        int j;
      };
    }

[0]:https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7qFfPYl0t8Cq7auyblZqxA

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plan_9_from_Bell_Labs

> Unofficial development for the system also continues on the 9front fork, where active contributors provide monthly builds and new functionality. So far, the 9front fork has provided the system Wi-Fi drivers, audio drivers, USB support and built-in game emulator, along with other features.

I like this section included in the release PDF:

    0.1.3 − Is Plan 9 a cult run by scam artists?

    From a newcomer's perspective, it feels like dealing with a cult run by scam artists. It seems someone wants to profit from me by selling books on Amazon, like a multi-level marketing group. People say others here are on a spectrum, but it feels more like psychosis, with a loss of contact with reality. I really feel like I'm being gaslighted. I might seem like a troll, but you don't understand how you appear to others.

lol

Why not research it yourself instead of asking others? Am I the only one who thinks this is becoming increasingly common?