On Mon, Oct 11, 2010 at 12:07 PM, Robert Raschke <rtrli...@googlemail.com>wrote:
> > On Mon, Oct 11, 2010 at 10:05 AM, Mark Carter <alt.mcar...@gmail.com>wrote: > >> I was reading the suckless.org website the other day, and they seemed >> quite keen on Plan 9. I am running Linux. Is there a useful summary >> document that explains where plan9port fits in with Glendix, and why >> anyone should care about Plan 9 anyway (hope that doesn't come across >> as rude)? >> >> > Most of the people who can answer best are currently at the Plan 9 Workshop > (http://www.iwp9.org/), so they'll doubtless chip in a wee bit later. > > Plan 9 is a research OS that has had a quite amazing impact on most other > Unix type OSes. For example: UTF-8, process filesystem (generalised to "use > a filesystem as a well defined abstraction mechanism"), recursive window > systems (ie. a full windowing system inside a window, not 100% sure who did > it first, but the Plan 9 one is amazingly consistent and so easy to use it > makes others look clunky), and full historical filesystem (remember > everything you ever did using snapshots). > > Plan 9 is not a polished end user OS! > > Robby > > Oh, and most of the Plan 9 tools were first made available to use outside the Plan 9 OS through Russ Cox's plan9 in user space effort ( http://swtch.com/plan9port/). And there's the virtualisation project vx32 that includes Plan 9 as an example. Not sure how they fit into a holistic view. They're more like pragmatic ways forward when you can't (or don't want to) run a stand alone OS. One of the great things in Plan 9 is the readability of the code. You can actually dive in and see how it all works without needing an augmented brain. Although it may require adjusting your thinking to a "let's try to manage all this complexity a bit better" mindframe. And that can take a bit of time and effort. But it's well worth it. Robby
