AVIOS stands for A VIrtual Operating System, that is it loads and runs multiple processes written in the AviosPL language which can interact with each other and the outside world just as in a real OS.
The main reason for Avios existing is not simply to have a virtual OS, as by itself this concept isn’t that useful. Its raison d’etre is that it provides a way for people with no C experience to set up an internet server (or even mulitple ones) and then only having to code in AviosPL which is a far simpler language than C as well as not having to worry about socket coding details.
This program only runs on Unix systems. As of writing its been tested on
- HP-UX 10.01 & 10.2
- Linux 1.2.13
- Digital Unix 3.2 (OSF)
- SunOS 5.5
— Neil Robertson, August 1997
See also: NUTS