From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Message-ID: <3E4BDDC9.6030703@nas.com> From: Jack Johnson User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.2a) Gecko/20020910 MIME-Version: 1.0 To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu Subject: Re: [9fans] So What is P9 good for..... References: <6ef76860.0302121402.3a63f201@posting.google.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Date: Thu, 13 Feb 2003 10:02:49 -0800 Topicbox-Message-UUID: 5ca3abda-eacb-11e9-9e20-41e7f4b1d025 Jeffrey Haun wrote: > Why do YOU use Plan 9 and not Linux/FreeBSD? I think like several people here, I use both, but as a self-professed weenie I can tell you I was drawn to Plan 9 by a handful of things it does that Linux/*BSD can't (or won't) do, namely private namespaces (though this is starting to change), and most recently venti/fossil. Sure, there's no Mozilla, no OpenOffice, Samba, WebDAV, FireWire, WINE, etc., but there's a surprising amount of quality stuff there if you dig. Some of it requires a mental shift if you're coming from another environment. It may not be user friendly stuff, but it's insanely useful stuff, so it becomes a very introspective process, and you have to ask yourself, "Why *am* I here?" Plan 9 kind of expects you to do some actual work. I was joking with a friend the other day about Plan 9, about how the continual 9fans thread is, "Why can't I _____ in Plan 9?" and someone from the Labs says, "Oh, we do that with awk here." I've found the frustrating parts tend to be unrelated to Plan 9 but from the bad habits picked up through the years adapting to other systems, and from my own inabilities and unfamiliarity. But, the learning curve is hardly steep, 9fans is always helpful, and it's always refreshing to learn and do something new. Plus, I'm a weenie. As much as I goof off at home with Plan 9, it's so much worse under an OS where you can waste an hour Saturday morning tweaking a window manager theme and trying out Yet Another Browser. I'd rather spend my time learning a little something new. ------ I recently read an article where someone was talking about his latest OS-of-the-week (which I can relate to, because I'm kind of an OS whore), and the author said something that struck a chord with me. He said at the end of the day, no matter what whiz-bang technology comes across his desk, UNIX does the heavy lifting. There are tools you use to accomplish your job. Some of those tools you find, buy or build, and some of them are provided for you. Some of them are required by your job, and some no one really notices or cares how it gets done as long as it's done and done well. People talk about Linux making inroads in businesses and most people don't know, because it's all infrastructure, and the point is that end users shouldn't have to know, care or worry about infrastructure. I think Plan 9 and its concepts are an amazing foundation, and I envy the people who are able to use it as the foundation for their infrastructure. I also think that though Plan 9 is about ideas and not markets, it's also in a position to be that kind of shadow player in organizations as an invisible, reliable piece of the infrastructure. -J