[9fans] 9fans@21c3 report (LONG)

[9fans] 9fans@21c3 report (LONG)

[Matthias Teege]

The 21c3 is over now, and as planned, we used this occasion of 21c3
to bandy Plan9.  Conclusion: 21c3 was a very interesting event, and
we had much fun with the Linux people there.

Unfortunatly the date for 21c3 was not very family-friendly, therefore
only 50 percent of the german Plan9 fans were able to join the
congress, that means: 20h and me. For the presentation we used the
following equipment: a CPU/fileserver, a notebook with Plan9
installation as well as an iBook with Drawterm and Inferno.
Congratulations: Our small Plan9 net was the first running/working
one in the whole Congress! (Network to the outside first worked on
the second day.)

At the first day I had the pleasure to lecture face-to-face with
approx. 30 people. But 5 minutes were not enough time to introduce
Plan9 and Inferno, I am afraid, we will have to ask for 15 minutes
Slot next time. BTW, the speech was recorded and will be published
during the next days. I have to "confess": the speech was given in
german language.

When the lecture was finished, 20h handed out Glenda posters all
over the hackcenter - and then we were busy with presenting Plan9
the next 3 days. The interest was amazing, and many visitors were
more than surprised to see Plan9 working. Many users are still
thinking about the Plan9 system as a dead one or a no serviceable
one, but we were able to clear this misunderstanding.

Most of the people, we were talking with, enjoyed the really important
features as Namespace or "everything is a file". The Linux boys
tried to explain, that under Unix everything is a file too. That
was the moment, we demonstrated 'cat /dev/mouse' or executed rio
in rio. Great Fun! Furthermore there were a lot of questions about
administration and hardware support. The fact, that in a Plan9
system only one server, the fileserver, has to be administrated,
was easy to understand for our audience, but normally the "how to
use/deal with the single point of failure" question followed every
time. When we mentioned that there is no superuser in the Plan9
system, they watched closely the root in our systems.

The next important problem was the applicableness of Plan9. Nearly
everyone asked: "What is the use of Plan9?". We noticed, except a
client for instant messaging, we had the full "hacker equipment".
We were able to show  the Web- und Mailservers as well as editors,
Shell, Compiler und Debugger. Many people were also suprised about
the fact, that all of these things were developed, not just "ported".
We strictly ignored questions about special applications as LDAP
or ACL, because in Plan9 we can adapt our namespaces. Finaly there
were enquires about references as well as Inferno and Plan9 workshops.

At the second day there was the idea of making a little hack to
demonstrate the Plan9 power. 20h wrote a FTP scanner, which we used
for searching the local net for all FTP servers. Then we mounted
these servers with ftpfs into our Plan 9 system and established a
"Monster-Meta-FTP Server". After the first tests we had mounted
approx. 50 servers. Unfortunately the 21c3 was over before we were
able to start with copy TB via cp.

Conclusion: Inside the Lunix community there is an interest in an
alternative operating system with a new concept. Nearly everyone
we were talking with, was enthusiastically about the system. The
main problem is the installation, esp. regarding the hardwaresupport.
We referred to VMware and Inferno, but is seems to be helpful to
produce an installation CD based on qemu or xen as well as to get
a documentation of the first Plan9 steps. There were some users who
installed Plan9 successfully, but then they were exhausted, and
they dont wanted to learn more about new editors or the mailsystem.

An other important subject for the documentation is security.
Especially the use of namespaces as well as their influence to
security was a common question. Not the theoretical part, but a
practical documentation has to be focused. A further helpful thing
could be a publicly available Plan9 server as tip9ug.jp One of the
visitors offered us free of charge housespace.

Plan9 fans have to think about replacing some commonly used protocolls
and services as http or smtp with Plan9 mechanism. There is no sense
in taking over unefficient  software or procedures from the Unix
world. With Plan9 there is a chance to solve problems easier and
smarter. And this is what we wanted to demonstrate at the 21c3. An
effectiv webfs, that we can use for mounting the web and editing
files with cat, tail, cp or page, is better than writing a webbrowser.

At the end I would like to say that it is worth to introduce Plan9
at events as the 21c3 congress. We had a nice time! The next events
where we try to be is at Fosdem, Linuxtag Chemnitz and Linuxtag
Karlsruhe.

Many thanks
20h and mtg

Re: [9fans] 9fans@21c3 report (LONG)

[Gorka Guardiola Múzquiz]

> everyone asked: "What is the use of Plan9?". We noticed, except a
> client for instant messaging, we had the full "hacker equipment".

Not true. There is an unofficial msn client...

                                                                G.

Re: [9fans] 9fans@21c3 report (LONG)

[YAMANASHI Takeshi]

mtg, thank you for an interesting report.

On Wed Jan 12 00:48:26 JST 2005, Matthias Teege wrote:
> The next important problem was the applicableness of Plan9. Nearly
> everyone asked: "What is the use of Plan9?". We noticed, except a
> client for instant messaging, we had the full "hacker equipment".

BTW, there exists an AIM client running under vt.
	http://bsflite.sourceforge.net/
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