[9fans] plan 9

[9fans] plan 9

[Isaac Stern]

I have heard lots of good things about plan9 in a past. How it is
innovative OS and it takes file abstractions step futher then UNIX,
but have never really made any serious research on topic.
Could someone please sum up for me what is new in plan 9 besides it
being "multiserver/distribured" OS.
Sincerely,
IS.

[9fans] Re: plan 9

[Nick Roberts]

On Fri, 30 Aug 2002 09:57:14 GMT, Isaac Stern <drmoses@techie.com> strongly
typed:

>I have heard lots of good things about plan9 in a past. How it is
>innovative OS and it takes file abstractions step futher then UNIX,
>but have never really made any serious research on topic.
>Could someone please sum up for me what is new in plan 9 besides it
>being "multiserver/distribured" OS.

I think one of the tenets of the design is to make everything a file
(perhaps with the idea of uniformly applying file security controls to
everything). Thus all devices are seen as files, various OS abstractions,
such as pipes and message queues, are seen as files, and so on.

I personally think this is a daft idea. The object-oriented OS concept is
far more flexible and powerful.

--
Nick Roberts

Re: [9fans] Re: plan 9

[Lucio De Re]

On Mon, Sep 02, 2002 at 09:13:26AM +0000, Nick Roberts wrote:
>
> I personally think this is a daft idea. The object-oriented OS concept is
> far more flexible and powerful.
>
A dangerous comment to make.  Now I'll sit here holding my breath
until you're done implementing such a wonderment.

Please don't forget to let us all know when you're finished.

++L

Re: [9fans] Re: plan 9

[Steve Kilbane]

> I think one of the tenets of the design is to make everything a file
> (perhaps with the idea of uniformly applying file security controls to
> everything). Thus all devices are seen as files, various OS abstractions,
> such as pipes and message queues, are seen as files, and so on.

"Everyone is entitled to an *informed* opinion."
	--- Harlan Ellison.

steve

Re: [9fans] Re: plan 9

[Ronald G Minnich]

On Mon, 2 Sep 2002, Nick Roberts wrote:

> I personally think this is a daft idea. The object-oriented OS concept is
> far more flexible and powerful.


any examples that don't totally suck?

ron

Re: [9fans] Re: plan 9

[Russ Cox]

Plan 9 _is_ object-oriented (in the original Smalltalk
sense, not the perverted C++ sense).  Its objects are files.
If all you're going to do is troll, go away.

Russ

Re: [9fans] Re: plan 9

[Ronald G Minnich]

On Mon, 2 Sep 2002, Russ Cox wrote:

> Plan 9 _is_ object-oriented (in the original Smalltalk
> sense, not the perverted C++ sense).  Its objects are files.
> If all you're going to do is troll, go away.

this is the frustrating thing which I hit all the time. I tell people
about Plan 9 and they bring up Mach or some other disaster (K42 is the
latest in this long list) and say those other OO systems are better. Why?
Well, because. Because why? well, it's OO. arg.

ron

Re: [9fans] Re: plan 9

[Russ Cox]

Ron's comment makes me think I should have explained
myself a little more, and anyway I have a fun story.

The whole fad OO argument saddens me, since Plan 9 probably
pushes the real point of OO -- consistent and reused
interfaces -- farther than any other system.  The problem
with the current fad OO world is that there are hardly
any consistently-used interfaces, so you lose all the
potential reuse.  Plan 9 may only have one real interface
but we sure do reuse it a LOT.  And we really do have
many interfaces, such as the one presented to a cpu
server by a terminal (and by drawterm), or the one
presented to clients by kernel graphics drivers
(and by rio, and by vncs, and by drawterm), or the
authentication files presented by the 3e kernels
(and by authfs), or the auth files presented by
auth/factotum (and by auth/factotum, whenever you
care to reinvoke it!), and on and on.  I would very much
like to hear about any systems that are more object
oriented.

I got an iPod a few days ago, one of the spiffy new
Windows ones that have a FAT32 file system.  It came
with MusicMatch Jukebox, which was exhibiting some
bugs in the actual downloading to the iPod.  There
were various people who'd written software for
Windows to talk to the Mac iPod (which has an HFS+
file system), software that was supposed to be quite
good, and I mourned the fact that I couldn't use it.
Then I remembered that all the Windows software for
talking with the Mac iPod was layered on top of a
general Mac file system driver, so that the
iPod was actually mounted by Windows and manipulated
via file system operations.  Well, I reasoned, my iPod
is already mounted, so I'll install the iPod software,
ignore the Mac FS drivers, and point the software at
my already-mounted FAT32 iPod.  It worked the first
time.

Imagine if everything behaved like that, presenting
good interfaces so that only the interface rather than
the actual details of the implementation mattered.
You'd have Plan 9.

Russ

Re: [9fans] Re: plan 9

[Eric Dorman]

Russ Cox wrote:

>Ron's comment makes me think I should have explained
>myself a little more, and anyway I have a fun story.
>
>The whole fad OO argument saddens me, since Plan 9 probably
>pushes the real point of OO -- consistent and reused
>interfaces -- farther than any other system.  The problem
>with the current fad OO world is that there are hardly
>any consistently-used interfaces, so you lose all the
>potential reuse.  Plan 9 may only have one real interface
>but we sure do reuse it a LOT.  And we really do have
>many interfaces, such as the one presented to a cpu
>server by a terminal (and by drawterm), or the one
>presented to clients by kernel graphics drivers
>(and by rio, and by vncs, and by drawterm), or the
>authentication files presented by the 3e kernels
>(and by authfs), or the auth files presented by
>auth/factotum (and by auth/factotum, whenever you
>care to reinvoke it!), and on and on.  I would very much
>like to hear about any systems that are more object
>oriented.
>[xxx]
>Imagine if everything behaved like that, presenting
>good interfaces so that only the interface rather than
>the actual details of the implementation mattered.
>You'd have Plan 9.
>
>Russ
>
This all is precisely why I've pretty much setttled on a 9p2000/virtual
mount
architecture for my high-performance computing stuff rather than some
distributed-object protocol.  Avoid CORBA bloat and still be able to
rendezvous in Java, Smalltalk, C and C++.

Now if I could only run Plan9 on HPPA-MP, I'd be set :)

Eric Dorman

Re: [9fans] Re: plan 9

[Geoff Collyer]

I think that for many people, "object-oriented" has become a
content-free buzzphrase, much like "structured" had by 1975 (or at the
lastest 1980).  Both have connotations of "good, warm, fuzzy" or more
specifically, "approved of by me".  So "O-O OSs are better" just means
"I like O-O OSs"; take with as many tons of salt as necessary.