if you need full access to /proc, plan 9 (specifically, its distribution 9front) could be of interest for you

after all, plan 9 had /proc first

tux0r: Research Unix v8 had it pre-plan-9, IIRC.

wasn't there a paper written about it?

I thought I recalled coming across one at some point

yes

'first introduced by Tom Killian in the research Eighth Edition UNIX system'

[illumos-gate] 15575 getmacaddr() should properly print errors -- Toomas Soome <tsoome⊙mc>

[illumos-gate] 15531 libconv: clean up the build -- Toomas Soome <tsoome⊙mc>

[illumos-gate] 15576 loader: lsmod -s does output garbage -- Toomas Soome <tsoome⊙mc>