From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Message-Id: <1538500448.2470811.1528100136.1AAB892D@webmail.messagingengine.com> From: Ethan Gardener To: 9fans@9fans.net MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" In-Reply-To: References: <20181002113028.kucfal5ffcjjk7ky@v520.kathe.in> Date: Tue, 2 Oct 2018 18:14:08 +0100 Subject: Re: [9fans] plan9port : complete system : kernel : freebsd || linux ? Topicbox-Message-UUID: e5110450-ead9-11e9-9d60-3106f5b1d025 On Tue, Oct 2, 2018, at 3:41 PM, Dave MacFarlane wrote: > What do you mean by "a complete, installable system for plan9ports"? That's my question too! > If you mean one that uses p9p in place of gnu utils, that's something > I've thought about > trying to do before, but I'd suggest taking it one step further and > seeing if you could use > a 9p root filesystem and see how far you can take the per process > namespaces of Linux > to make it feel like Plan 9. (AFAIK, that wouldn't be possible with > NetBSD or FreeBSD, but > I might be mistaken..) I had a bit of a go at the shell tools side of things. It was fun in a way= , but I won't pretend the result was as usable as Plan 9, never mind Linux.= It wasn't worth continuing to the point where experimenting with per proc= ess namespaces might become interesting. The same goes for making use of L= inux's interesting clone() system call, which afaik close to rfork(). It was just an exercise. I wasn't expecting too much out of it because I'v= e experimented with minimal Linux before, running LFS from 2001 to 2003 and= being involved with a source-based Linux distribution from 2004 to about 2= 009. My conclusion was so much interesting software wants the whole bloatw= are circus that to do without it requires becoming a 1-man patching machine= . This goes all the way into the shell. A surprising lot of software need= s the shell to be the Bourne shell and the various utilities to have POSIX-= specified options and behave in POSIX-specified ways. P9P utilities don't = do that. I also got the idea that the days of hobbyist-maintained Linux di= stributions are over, that it takes a lot of dedication or a large team. I= personally resolved to use bloatware without paying too much attention to = it for "modern" software, and to have my fun with what I call 'island syste= ms' -- not existing to provide services for modern software but rather litt= le universes in themselves. They can be hosted or emulated, or run on old = hardware, I don't care so long as they're not going to stop working or brea= k programs I wrote at the drop of a hat. P9P could be considered an island= system in itself, old operating systems and hardware too, but my current p= rimary choice of island system is Forth. If, on the other hand, you basically want Plan 9, using Linux as a driver l= ayer, there have been multiple attempts over the years, some with corporate= or academic backing, but none of them seem to have worked out. The guy be= hind most of them eventually moved on to writing an actual operating system= influenced by Plan 9. --=20 Progress might have been all right once, but it has gone on too long -- Ogd= en Nash