page_title: Plan 9 from Bell Labs
section_title: Graphical programs
hierarchical_section_title: Plan 9 from Bell Labs / Software for Plan 9 / Graphical programs
caption_attribution_description: English: Plan 9 from Bell Labs, 640x480x8 colour mode, showing acme and drawterm.
context_page_description: Plan 9 from Bell Labs is a distributed operating system, originating in the Computing Science Research Center at Bell Labs in the mid-1980s, and building on UNIX concepts first developed there in the late 1960s. The final official release was in early 2015.
  Under Plan 9, UNIX's everything is a file metaphor is extended via a pervasive network-centric filesystem, and the cursor-addressed, terminal-based I/O at the heart of UNIX-like operating systems is replaced by a windowing system and graphical user interface without cursor addressing, although rc, the Plan 9 shell, is text-based.
  The name Plan 9 from Bell Labs is a reference to the Ed Wood 1959 cult science fiction Z-movie Plan 9 from Outer Space. The name of the project's mascot is “Glenda, the Plan 9 Bunny.” The system continues to be used and developed by operating system researchers and hobbyists.
context_section_description: Unlike Unix, Plan 9 was designed with graphics in mind. After booting, a Plan 9 terminal will run the rio windowing system, in which the user can create new windows displaying rc. Graphical programs invoked from this shell replace it in its window.
  The plumber provides an inter-process communication mechanism which allows system-wide hyperlinking.
  Sam and acme are Plan 9's text editors.
caption: Plan 9 running acme and rc
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