Comment by mike_hearn

The fact that everything is not a file. No OS actually implements that idea including Plan9. For example, directories are not files. Plan9 re-uses a few of the APIs for them, but you can't use write() on a directory, you can only read them.

Pretending everything is a file was never a good idea and is based on an untrue understanding of computing. The everything-is-an-object phase the industry went through was much closer to reality.

Consider how you represent a GUI window as a file. A file is just a flat byte array at heart, so:

1. What's the data format inside the file? Is it a raw bitmap? Series of rendering instructions? How do you communicate that to the window server, or vice-versa? What about ancillary data like window border styles?

2. Is the file a real file on a real filesystem, or is it an entry in a virtual file system? If the latter then you often lose a lot of the basic features that makes "everything is a file" attractive, like the ability to move files around or arrange them in a user controlled directory hierarchy. VFS like procfs are pretty limited. You can't even add your own entries like adding symlinks to procfs directories.

3. How do you receive callbacks about your window? At this point you start to conclude that you can't use one file to represent a useful object like a window, you'd need at least a data and a control file where the latter is some sort of socket speaking some sort of RPC protocol. But now you have an atomicity problem.

4. What exactly is the benefit again? You won't be able to use the shell to do much with these window files.

And so on. For this reason Plan9's GUI API looked similar to that of any other OS: a C library that wrapped the underlying file "protocol". Developers didn't interact with the system using the file metaphor, because it didn't deliver value.

All the post-UNIX operating system designs ignored this idea because it was just a bad one. Microsoft invested heavily in COM and NeXT invested in the idea of typed, IDL-defined Mach ports.