Byte.com: Distributed OSs, The State of the Art

Moshe Bar examines distributed operating systems, offering a summary of some of the most prominent: Amoeba, Inferno, Plan 9, Sprite, and his own Mosix:

"Some experts define a distributed operating system as an OS that manages a collection of independent computers and makes them appear to the users of the system as a single computer. Largely as academic projects, several implementations of such distributed operating systems were created in the late '80s and in the '90s, such as Amoeba, Inferno, Plan 9 and Sprite.

However, creating a scalable, efficient distributed OS with widespread user support is surely a formidable task, be it for research institutions or deep-pocketed companies.

Examples of failed distributed OSs abound."

Complete Story