Charon browser

This page was last updated at: Feb 24, 2026

Charon was a Desktop web browser that ran on Plan 9. It was developed for about 18 years before being discontinued. Development on Charon started in 2006, and while the project is clearly discontinued, it wasn't possible to figure out when development ceased.

This is an extremely obscure web browser. According to https://plan9.io/wiki/plan9/Web_browsers/index.html there is a browser called Charon that is a part of Inferno OS. I've never even heard of Inferno OS. The internet says that "Inferno® is a distributed operating system." and it looks like it was started in the early 2000s. There was a git commit for Inferno OS in 2024 which is cool and interesting. I'm also not sure about how Inferno OS or Charon relates to Plan 9.
And according to Wikipedia, there's a web browser called "i", which is based on Charon...! (Due to the name and obscurity, I literally cannot find anything about it - please tell me if you know anything).
According to the git repository, it was first started in 2006, and basically hasn't been updated since 2009, however there was one commit in 2024.

Charon is the web browser supplied with the Inferno OS. It supports Javascript and https. It has very few features (a good thing) but requires the inferno runtime environment. Charon is packaged as part of Inferno.

— Charon developers

About Charon

Development Status Discontinued
The developers have announced that the browser won't be developed any more
Launched 2006
Last Updated 2024
Operating System Plan 9
Device platform Desktop
Rendering Engine Custom
General Info Plan 9 Web Browsers
URL Code Repo InfernoOS Code Repository
Wikipedia Article List of Plan 9 Applications

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