Re: [9fans] fortune-worthy

[John Stalker <stalker@Math.Princeton.EDU>]

> I think however that its main design goal---easy distribution of services
> and resources and the shared environment it presents to the users---has
> been 'superseded? replaced? ignored?(pick your favorite)' in the real
> world by the web, and that is another discipline.

I disagree somewhat.  Per machine namespaces are really a great nuisance.
I have three and a half machines at home and one at work and I already
feel the strain of keeping everything in sync.  Web interfaces are not
much good for this, and the standard solutions--NSF, rsync, etc.--feel
like the hacks that they are.  I can only imagine what administering
a large network is like.

The problem is, I think, a bit more subtle.  The per process namespace
idea and largely transparent networking are still as good an idea now
as they were originally.  Plan9 doesn't work as seemlessly as I would
like, however, in a network whose topology is continually changing.
My laptop, for example, may be part of my LAN, the internet, my
employer's LAN, or operating stand-alone.  Other OSes are no better
at this, but it seems that this is the sort of thing to which plan9
should be well suited.  Plan B has some interesting ideas in this
area.

Plan9 also has some problems at small scales.  It really wants a
dedicated file server, though not quite as badly as in the old days.

--
John Stalker
Department of Mathematics
Princeton University
(609)258-6469