I make the specification of non-linux because otherwise this would just become a thread full of obscure distros that do the same thing as a million other distros.
Some lesser known OSs:
- AROS - based on Amiga OS, has some derivatives like IcarOS and MorphOS
- Haiku - based on BeOS
- Redox - Unix-like, made in Rust (might technically count as linux?)
- Serenity - Unix-like, very late 90s look and feel
- Kolibri - Tiny OS, the image is ~44MB. It also has a smaller version that fits in a single floppy.
- PhantomOS - When 3 Russians decide to turn everything about a typical OS upside down.
The networking stuff probably won’t do you much good if you do not have other Plan 9 systems to talk to, but the GUI and window manager and editor, those also operate in this way that’s 100% different from anything else that exists. To me the networking and the way the file sharing works are probably the most interesting things, so IDK, you might be partly right.
I think this might be part of why it hasn’t caught on at all is that a lot of the stuff about it that works better only works better when talking with other Plan 9 systems, of which there aren’t really any.