From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
Date: Wed, 30 Apr 1997 17:11:04 -0400
From: rsc@research.att.com rsc@research.att.com
Subject: The future of Plan9?
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Message-ID: <19970430211104.C1tFNp7kxhiYEzRF0qGyt5qMm_laYuCIKknTHL44-OA@z>

I want to address a couple supposéd shortcomings raised
by Digby.  He writes that it's main inconvenience is its
inability to communicate with other operating systems
effectively.  This is half correct.

I have found that Plan 9 communicates particularly well
with any operating system, and that this is a strength.
Through u9fs, I can access any Unix system through
a simple and well documented protocol.  Ftpfs, dossrv, and the 
other file servers are good ideas as well.  A couple days ago,
I `operated' on a broken DOS floppy in a Linux floppy
drive using a Plan 9 system 15 miles away via u9fs because
all the good disk editing/looking utilities I have are on 
Plan 9.

At the heart of all this is the fact that the file servers
all operate in user space and are more easily hacked at.
People have written file servers that handle Linux e2fs
file systems, BSD's FFS, and others.
File system clients are a lot easier to do under Plan 9
than under, say, Linux, where everything has to be done in 
the kernel.

I've found that Plan 9 is the best operating system for
accessing other systems.  I will concede that accessing
Plan 9 *from* other systems is harder than it
need be.  I do a lot of mail-reading and occasional programming
telnetted into Plan 9 from a 80x25 text-mode Linux box at
school, and wouldn't mind seeing a `vi' or something else small
and cursor-addressed, even if the vt100 codes were hard coded.

I also wouldn't mind seeing 9x revived.  I would do it
myself except I don't use X at all anymore.
I expect to be using X a lot in a couple of months, and
I might get sufficiently annoyed to do it then.  

Perhaps the best way to do 9x is to write one that runs
under Inferno?  Just a thought.

Russ