Re: [9fans] Re: 9fans Digest, Vol 27, Issue 52

["Sascha Retzki" <sretzki@gmx.de>]

> On Mon, 24 Jul 2006 21:28:58 +0200, Ronald G Minnich <rminnich@lanl.gov>
> wrote:
>
>> Another thing I ought to mention here. A LOT of the Plan 9 guys have two
>> spouses: their plan 9 machine and their windows or linux or macos
>> system. That tells me that Plan 9 has not been, and is not, sufficiently
>> capable to be the only system one uses.
>
> Allow me a question: what exactly is it that the long-term Plan 9 users
> miss on Plan 9, to look for it on some other system? An application I
> understand people use regularly via VNC is a browser - is there anything
> else that really is missing?
>
> /c

There are several things. 'Multimedia' beeing one. I am not talking about mplayer here, but rather that you for example cannot or can hardly play mp3 and ogg (vorbis, flac) files on Plan9. There are APE ports for ogg123/mpg123 iirc (when I saw them first, they were not on sources.. maybe that has not even changed yet). but those do not fork() and don't present the user with some way of e.g. fast forward etc.

Videos are the other part of that story. fgb as some mpeg2-decoder iirc - don't know if that one works.

> You mention "third party apps": what exactly
> is missing?

Powerpoint, flash, all those 'multimedia' things - oh please. If anybody feels like he wants to write converters for those: thumbs up. I am not that one. I don't even want them even if we can 'decode' them.


But, as I am interested in all different things wrt audio, I am interested in improving the situation from note#1.. anyway. No results yet.

As I have not yet found a cool way to forward tcp/ip traffic from non-plan9-systems in my LAN to the internets, I have a a netbsd-system doing NAT. Bah. Got to ssh root@routi.local.net every evening to switch it off :( I hate that. Okay I also hate NAT.. no idea howto really fix that. I thought about ip/ppp{oe,} once... hm

As I sometimes need/want a browser which parses >~ 98% webpages, maybe some windows-tools if I need to work from my home, and as I occassionally play some 3d-games, I got a windows-box. I don't really expect those things on Plan9, tho I would love to see them :)


> And mainly: what is the reason for it missing?

The reasons are thus obviously:
1.) properitary systems. Bummer
2.) more time for things to grow - more developers doing things in userspace. Slashdot/osnews.com may or may not fix that. I don't care as I will try to do my best anyway. Bummer? More marketing? Marketing at the right places (universities?)! No idea how that could be done and who could do that best. Bummer
3.) ethical reasons - we have no idea howto fix them but we all know the current solutions in 'IT' are wrong. Bummer