Re: [9fans] Plan ? (was: native install)

[Corey <corey@bitworthy.net>]

Multiple responses following, so that I'm not accused of spamming the list.

On Monday 29 March 2010 19:02:23 Iruata Souza wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 29, 2010 at 10:21 PM, Corey <corey@bitworthy.net> wrote:
<snip>
> > No one's willing to spearhead a "General Purpose 9" experiment, and no
> > one's interested in collaborating on and contributing to such a project?
>

<raises hand>

I'm interested. My qualifications are limited, but I'd be willing to find a
way to contribute.

But first I'd want to know exactly what was meant by "general purpose",
and what's there to gain from it. I'd also want to know where to begin,
and what technical challenges and architectural changes would be involved.
If it's simply about porting gtk, firefox and open office to plan 9, then
forget it. Finally, it's important to establish that this project, whatever
it's called, does not aim to somehow infect Plan 9 proper.

Unfortunately, that's precisely the sort of initial hypothetically-scoped,
collaborative bootstrap process which invariably elicits characteristic 9fans
quips of the usual fare: "talk, talk, talk - where's the code?", "if you want
X you know where to get it.", "Plan 9 _is_ a general purpose o.s.", et cetera.

On Monday 29 March 2010 19:07:07 Jacob Todd wrote:
> > No one's willing to spearhead a "General Purpose 9" experiment, and no
> > one's interested in collaborating on and contributing to such a project?
>
> It would seem not. We're happy here, where things are sane.
>

Where things are sane.

A "general purpose" graphical operating environment built on the Plan 9 kernel
and user space, implemented using the intrinsic Plan 9 conceptual models - is
inherently insane?

Insane, or impossible?

Who knows. Such an effort can't even be properly discussed here - let alone
leave the starting gates.

On Monday 29 March 2010 19:17:03 Patrick Kelly wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 29, 2010 at 10:21 PM, Corey <corey@bitworthy.net> wrote:
> > Are the core Plan 9 design concepts in fact ineffective or
> > unsuitable for building a general purpose computing environment?
>
> Should that statement be valid, the creation of UNIX in the first
> place is an utter pointless failure; are you willing to say that?
<snip>
> Plan 9 took that change to the next level, so you'd be slanderiIng us
> even more.
>

Plan 9 took it to the next level... and then... what happened after that?

> Plan 9 is general purpose. There's no reason you can write software
> for, say, office suites, graphics edition, audio editing, MIDI,
> gaming, or anything else. We just don't have the need for it.
>

"We" don't have the need for those things - because they are already
fulfilled via other operating systems. Plan 9 is, effectively, a purely
auxiliary OS - by design. And we like it that way. We'd rather use *nix,
windows or a mac to do those things than to use Plan 9 for them. But,
as we're using other platforms to do all those things we can't do under
Plan 9, we scornfully complain about how naively designed and horribly
bloated those programs are - yet after fifteen years, "we" still fail to prove
how those things could be better implemented under the superior Plan 9
approach. And we like it that way: distributing files, and programming kenc
in rio with acme under 9term - we feel that Plan 9 has successfully reached
its zenith.

On Monday 29 March 2010 20:10:59 Rahul Murmuria wrote:
> Well, most of Plan 9's ideas have been trickling down into "general
> purpose" operating systems for years!

You're implying that, via the "trickle down" process, Plan 9 will become
completely obviated.

Which Plan 9 ideas would you say have not yet been fully and properly
integrated into other operating systems? And why haven't they?

> I don't see what others here claiming failure of Plan 9 are referring to.
>

(for the record, I'm not claiming that Plan 9 has failed - quite the contrary)

> In order to bring new technology to mass consumption, you don't bring
> the masses to drive the formula 1 race car... you instead try and
> adapt the new concepts into the Toyotas and Hondas...
>

Or you try and adapt the formula 1 race car (or the Jeep, or the HMMWV...)
into something better suited for a somewhat more generic market/use-case.