In the ’80s, Bell Labs researchers, bored and frustrated by Unix’s limitations, built Plan 9—an OS embracing radical simplicity and purity. Filesystems? Networks? Devices? Everything became a file. No special cases, no shortcuts. Predictably, admins hated it: Plan 9 demanded you relearn everything, treating familiar tools as outdated relics. It gained a small, cultish following—mostly academics and masochists—then faded quietly. Today, Plan 9 lingers like an eccentric cousin at Unix’s family reunion, misunderstood, overlooked, and smugly confident it’s still fundamentally superior to its bloated sibling.
