Re: [9fans] Fwd: ubiquitous environment?

[Ethan Grammatikidis <eekee57@fastmail.fm>]

On Sat, Mar 3, 2018, at 4:22 PM, Rudolf Sykora wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I am not sure this email ever made it to the forum,
> hence I decided to ask once more...
>
> Thanks for any comments...
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Rudolf Sykora <rudolf.sykora@gmail.com>
> Date: 16 June 2016 at 10:30
> Subject: ubiquitous environment?
> To: Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs <9fans@9fans.net>
>
>
> Hello, everyone,
>
> I read the following some time ago and now got back to it.
> It's from an interview with Russ Cox.
> https://usesthis.com/interviews/russ.cox/
>
> --------------
> The thing I miss most about Plan 9 was the way that no matter which
> computer you sat down at, you had the same environment. Because we
> were working off a shared file server - there were no local disks on
> the Plan 9 workstations - you could go home and log in and all your
> work was there waiting. Of course, it only worked because we had good,
> fast connectivity to the file server, and only file state - not
> application state - transferred, but it was still a huge win.
>
> Today it's taken for granted that everyone has local files on disk and
> you need programs like Unison or Dropbox (or for the power users,
> Mercurial or Git) to synchronize them, but what we had in Plan 9 was
> completely effortless, and my dream is to return to that kind of
> environment. I want to be working on my home desktop, realize what
> time it is, run out the door to catch my train, open my laptop on the
> train, continue right where I left off, close the laptop, hop off the
> train, sit down at work, and have all my state sitting there on the
> monitor on my desk, all without even thinking about it.
> --------------
>
> Has anyone tried a setup like that? -- Having a server at work and
> working on it even from home/anywhere? And how is it set up? Does it mean
> that wherever you sit you somehow mount the window system to get
> to the exactly same state that you left the machine in?
> (Ie. something like a screen/tmux but supplied by the system itself?)
>
> Thanks for any comments!
>
> Ruda
>

Indeed. I liked this, although I always wished application state would
transfer too. I imagined a sort of sam with multiple samterms, but I never
did anything about it. I'm starting to now, but I expect it won't be ready
for about a year, and I'm not working in C or (directly) for Plan 9.

I've been thinking about phones and tablets too, so I was a little bit excited
to see Inferno for Android. The person behind it seems enthusiastic, capable,
and a hard worker. He'd like to work on Inferno full-time.

https://github.com/bhgv/Inferno-OS_Android
https://github.com/bhgv/Inferno-OS_Android/releases

I haven't got involved myself for a few
reasons: I don't like Limbo very much, I wasn't totally satisfied with Plan 9
and assume Inferno would have similar limits, and I'd just started my own
major project before it was announced. I have hopes that retaining the
principles of simple, unified, networkable interfaces with a different
approach will yield better results, but I have a lot of exploration to do before I
have anything concrete to say.


--
The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne. -- Chaucer