Re: [9fans] plan9port : complete system : kernel : freebsd || linux ?

[Ethan Gardener <eekee57@fastmail.fm>]

On Thu, Oct 4, 2018, at 8:50 AM, Rui Carmo wrote:
> I wouldn’t allow the passive-aggressive mood that surfaces here from 
> time to time to turn me off the project. 
> 
> That said, I’m fascinated by how often (and how quickly) some threads 
> devolve into “there is no point in doing that” or “we don’t need those 
> modern contraptions” arguments - reminds me a lot of some of the hard 
> boiled academia types I used to work with back when VMS started losing 
> ground. 

I think a lot of us are hard boiled academic types, whether we've been through academia or not. :)

> As much as some folk here are not exactly fond of various nuances of 
> modern tech (from Linux to X to git, etc.),  I don’t think there’s any 
> need for dissing personal efforts to use or improve various aspects of 
> Plan9 (including, horror of horrors, making the user land a bit more 
> modern and usable, or at least more accessible to mainstream users).

My perspective is, "More modern or more usable, which do you mean?" :)  Many years ago, when I was under constant stress and had healed far less than I have now, modern GUIs were, in practice, the uttermost extreme of unusability!  The situation improved as I healed, as mouse technology improved, and as the worst excesses of 80s/90s GUI practice diminished somewhat, but I still find them insanely restrictive and awkward for the most part.  Even the parts which I find helpful are delivered in an awkward way, such as menus.

Then there's the question of what Mayuresh is trying to do.  His goal necessarily necessarily includes retaining parts of Linux which I've found through experience to be horrible!  Some of these parts would be the same in various BSDs; the userland for them is the same.  In some of these cases GUIs actually improve the situation, but Mayuresh's plan is to exclude those GUIs; you cannot have them with "minimal xorg".  As far as I'm concerned, the way of minimal POSIX is the way of pain.  Other people with different aptitudes may find it easier, I suppose.

-- 
Progress might have been all right once, but it has gone on too long -- Ogden Nash