[9fans] Investigating the Plan 9 Operating System - OSNews.com

[9fans] Investigating the Plan 9 Operating System - OSNews.com

[cse.psu.edu!9fans-bounces+9fans-archive=plan9.bell-labs.com, Andrew Hudson]

I read with some interest the criticisms of my recent Plan 9 article
on osnews. While I appreciate constuctive criticism and factual
corrections (yes, it's Gforce not GeForce, yes there is an emacs) I
think for the most part your criticisms are misguided.

The article was meant as a brief exposure of Plan 9 for people who may
have had little to no exposure to "alternative" operating systems and
as such its point was not to delve deeply into issues. The intent was
more to open a door to concepts that people without a computer science
degree might not have been exposed to.

With regard to David Leimbach's comments about the value of Osnews
being overrated, I have this to say. I pulled all of my materials from
the available Plan 9 web sources. Which by the way are mostly dead
links now. My impression when researching Plan 9 was that the
documentation barely made it out of internal releases. There's
certainly nothing polished about any of the Plan 9 repositories. There
is a lot of contradictory information on some fairly important topics,
like running under virtualization.  If you read through them there are
a vast number of disclaimors. These sorts of issues really don't give
one the impression that Plan 9 is undergoing a resurgence. If anything
it looks like other projects have taken the family jewels and left the
core project on life support.

Many of the Plan 9 web links are dead. The links to LLNL are dead and
it's my impression that LLNL is no longer involved in Plan 9 efforts.
Mail to some of the more visible Plan 9 proponents at LLNL went
un-answered or bounced.

Links to VMWare support for Plan 9 are mostly dead and an archived
post on 9Fans said V4 would never run on it. I couldn't get Plan 9 to
install under the now free Microsoft Virtual PC. Considering that MS
VPC is free, completely skirts most driver compatibility issues, and
could greatly increase Plan 9 trials you would think someone might
publish a FAQ for nubes. But there isn't one.

Here's a real issue that I don't think was ever adequately addressed
in any Plan 9 literature I ran across in my all-to-brief research. How
do you convey the deep concepts of Plan 9 to someone who doesn't have
5+ years of large scale system admin experience, or a Master's degree
in Computer Science? How do you convert the unwashed masses of Linux
users who boot the LiveCD and don't find KDE, Gnome, an IM client, or
Mozilla? The importance of an OS these days isn't about all the magic
in the kernel, it's what the OS can do for the user.  And by the way
you have 15 minutes to provide the new user with an exciting
out-of-box experience before you have lost them. With so many OS
alternatives out there already, people have a low threshhold for a
LiveCD with few user privileges.

Please forgive me if this has already been discussed. For all I know
it could have been a recurring thread since the Plan 9 inception. But
the fact remains that you have an operating system that is dazzling in
brilliance to a small number of really bright people, and no one else
gets it.

So please let me apologize for not completely conveying some of the
important issues such as SecStore and ndb. I worked with the material
at hand, had a limited time to write the article, and provided
references when I could. It was a fun research project. If, however,
other people see the reaction that 9Fans have to earnest contributors,
don't expect a lot more of them.

Kind regards,
Andrew Hudson
Ahudson.inc@gmail.com

Re: [9fans] Investigating the Plan 9 Operating System - OSNews.com

[andrey mirtchovski]

> Many of the Plan 9 web links are dead. The links to LLNL are dead and
> it's my impression that LLNL is no longer involved in Plan 9 efforts.
> Mail to some of the more visible Plan 9 proponents at LLNL went
> un-answered or bounced.

Surely you mean LANL instead of LLNL, right? Whom did you email?

The web site at lanl is gone because the organization that hosted it
got reorganized. There's an archive of that web page (which states
it's for historical purposes mostly) here:

http://pages.cpsc.ucalgary.ca/~mirtchov/lanlp9/

Perhaps you could've asked here instead of making assumptions who's
involved, where, and how.

Re: [9fans] Investigating the Plan 9 Operating System - OSNews.com

[csant]

> The article was meant as a brief exposure of Plan 9 for people who may
> have had little to no exposure to "alternative" operating systems and
> as such its point was not to delve deeply into issues. The intent was
> more to open a door to concepts that people without a computer science
> degree might not have been exposed to.

This is a very noble intention - but, alas, that is not enough, IMHO. On
the contrary... mis-information to those that do not know, is much worse
than no info at all. Those that have not been exposed to Plan 9 previously
might get a very wrong first impression, and what is worse, wrong
expectations.

I myself am very new to Plan 9 - but constant reading helps a lot. And
actually *trying out* stuff, playing with the system. Have you tried to
run emacs? That simple test would have helped not to raise hopes of
misinformed users. And it is very dangerous to start talking about stuff
you do not completely understand: namespaces, in Plan 9, don't have
anything to do with the network database. Yes, namespaces are confusing:
it has been recently mentioned by several, on this list.

I myself am struggeling with understanding how Plan 9 works - and when you
threw ndb in one pot with namespaces, I got even more confused. Your
article mis-informs, and consfuses.

> I pulled all of my materials from
> the available Plan 9 web sources. Which by the way are mostly dead
> links now.

Some private projects might well be dead - but as far as I can tell, the
URLs on the web site and in the wiki work mostly fine. At least, that's
where I collected my info from...

> Considering that MS
> VPC is free, completely skirts most driver compatibility issues, and
> could greatly increase Plan 9 trials you would think someone might
> publish a FAQ for nubes. But there isn't one.

You could start one :) The wiki has a FAQ, and maybe more answers to more
questions could be added there, if you miss some. The more people
contribute to documentation, and divulgation, the better it is for Plan 9.
But documentation and divulgation has to be correct. If you don't
understand something, leave it to somebody else. Or investigate, until you
*do* know something.

> How
> do you convey the deep concepts of Plan 9 to someone who doesn't have
> 5+ years of large scale system admin experience, or a Master's degree
> in Computer Science?

IIANM Francisco Ballesteros is planning an introductory course to Plan 9
at his university and asked the list about which points people do find
most confusing and hardest to understand. Will this material be available?

/c (a n00b's two cents...)

Re: [9fans] Investigating the Plan 9 Operating System - OSNews.com

[Federico G. Benavento]

Hola,

> Here's a real issue that I don't think was ever adequately addressed
> in any Plan 9 literature I ran across in my all-to-brief research. How
> do you convey the deep concepts of Plan 9 to someone who doesn't have
> 5+ years of large scale system admin experience, or a Master's degree
> in Computer Science?

anyone can use Plan 9, you just need to be open minded.

--
Federico G. Benavento (a law student who uses Plan 9 every day)

Re: [9fans] Investigating the Plan 9 Operating System - OSNews.com

[David Leimbach]

On 7/23/06, Andrew Hudson <ahudson.inc@gmail.com> wrote:
> I read with some interest the criticisms of my recent Plan 9 article
> on osnews. While I appreciate constuctive criticism and factual
> corrections (yes, it's Gforce not GeForce, yes there is an emacs) I
> think for the most part your criticisms are misguided.
>

Yeah, so you read my posts...

I just get REALLY tired, as I'm sure many people do, when you go to
read something reviewing an OS that you know about, just to see what
the reactions are going to be, and find it full of errors.

I apologize up front for my attitude towards it.  I was wrong, and I
was having a really messed up day to begin with.  Sometimes it's just
better to discard an email than send it.

That said, I'm glad you tried Plan 9, and I'm glad you attempted to
write something worthwhile about it on OSNews.

My behavior aside, it might be better in the future to pop a draft of
what you're intending to post to this group or maybe one or two people
from it who are experts (I'm not an expert btw) and ask them for their
feedback first.

A lot of what's wrong with the image of Plan 9 is that people "just
don't get it".


> With regard to David Leimbach's comments about the value of Osnews
> being overrated,

I think I mentioned all web journalism... I wasn't singling out OSNews per se.

 I have this to say. I pulled all of my materials from
> the available Plan 9 web sources. Which by the way are mostly dead
> links now. My impression when researching Plan 9 was that the
> documentation barely made it out of internal releases. There's
> certainly nothing polished about any of the Plan 9 repositories. There
> is a lot of contradictory information on some fairly important topics,
> like running under virtualization.  If you read through them there are
> a vast number of disclaimors. These sorts of issues really don't give
> one the impression that Plan 9 is undergoing a resurgence. If anything
> it looks like other projects have taken the family jewels and left the
> core project on life support.
>

Well you could have asked questions instead of assuming things.


> Many of the Plan 9 web links are dead. The links to LLNL are dead and
> it's my impression that LLNL is no longer involved in Plan 9 efforts.
> Mail to some of the more visible Plan 9 proponents at LLNL went
> un-answered or bounced.

Do you mean LANL?

>
> Links to VMWare support for Plan 9 are mostly dead and an archived
> post on 9Fans said V4 would never run on it. I couldn't get Plan 9 to
> install under the now free Microsoft Virtual PC. Considering that MS
> VPC is free, completely skirts most driver compatibility issues, and
> could greatly increase Plan 9 trials you would think someone might
> publish a FAQ for nubes. But there isn't one.
>

I thought our Wiki had a link to this stuff.

> Here's a real issue that I don't think was ever adequately addressed
> in any Plan 9 literature I ran across in my all-to-brief research. How
> do you convey the deep concepts of Plan 9 to someone who doesn't have
> 5+ years of large scale system admin experience, or a Master's degree
> in Computer Science? How do you convert the unwashed masses of Linux
> users who boot the LiveCD and don't find KDE, Gnome, an IM client, or
> Mozilla? The importance of an OS these days isn't about all the magic
> in the kernel, it's what the OS can do for the user.  And by the way
> you have 15 minutes to provide the new user with an exciting
> out-of-box experience before you have lost them. With so many OS
> alternatives out there already, people have a low threshhold for a
> LiveCD with few user privileges.
>

Now you've hit the nail on the head I think.  I don't have a Master's
in Computer Science but I think a lot of appreciating plan 9 comes
from understanding what's being abstracted at the interfaces it
provides.  Once you realize you can do things like tunneling
seamlessly by using "sshnet" (as easy to use as any ssh command is)
combined with the ease of u9fs, you can even find that the distributed
namespace will integrate fairly nicely with your existing unix
machines, and good times are had by all (hopefully).

> Please forgive me if this has already been discussed. For all I know
> it could have been a recurring thread since the Plan 9 inception. But
> the fact remains that you have an operating system that is dazzling in
> brilliance to a small number of really bright people, and no one else
> gets it.

Again the hammer falls on target.

>
> So please let me apologize for not completely conveying some of the
> important issues such as SecStore and ndb. I worked with the material
> at hand, had a limited time to write the article, and provided
> references when I could. It was a fun research project. If, however,
> other people see the reaction that 9Fans have to earnest contributors,
> don't expect a lot more of them.
>

Well, as I said, I think your heart was in the right place but without
doing real research and checking your facts, you're not really helping
our situation as much as spreading stuff that will live on in google's
caches about Plan 9 that aren't necessarily true.

Surely you have to see how that can possibly be damaging.

> Kind regards,
> Andrew Hudson
> Ahudson.inc@gmail.com
>

Re: [9fans] Investigating the Plan 9 Operating System - OSNews.com

[Christoph Lohmann]

Good morning.

Am Sun, 23 Jul 2006 16:40:40 -0700 schrieb "David Leimbach"
<leimy2k@gmail.com>:

> I just get REALLY tired, as I'm sure many people do, when you go to
> read something reviewing an OS that you know about, just to see what
> the reactions are going to be, and find it full of errors.

> [...] (I'm not an expert btw) [...]

> A lot of what's wrong with the image of Plan 9 is that people "just
> don't get it".

Where is your article?

Sincerely,

Christoph

Re: [9fans] Investigating the Plan 9 Operating System - OSNews.com

[Bruce Ellis]

i read through the slashdot stuff and saw no intelligence,
i liked the slam on scroll. it hasn't changed in 20 years
what's wrong? i can scroll a page or what i want, up or down.
i can click for "take me to absosulte position".

stupid arrows and thumb-flickers will never replace it, nice
slow drop shadows too.

and why is it that it's on the left?  that's where you are typing.

good to see that lunixes hate it.  4 million years they'll get it.

brucee

On 7/24/06, Christoph Lohmann <20h@r-36.net> wrote:
> Good morning.
>
> Am Sun, 23 Jul 2006 16:40:40 -0700 schrieb "David Leimbach"
> <leimy2k@gmail.com>:
>
> > I just get REALLY tired, as I'm sure many people do, when you go to
> > read something reviewing an OS that you know about, just to see what
> > the reactions are going to be, and find it full of errors.
>
> > [...] (I'm not an expert btw) [...]
>
> > A lot of what's wrong with the image of Plan 9 is that people "just
> > don't get it".
>
> Where is your article?
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Christoph
>

Re: Re: [9fans] Investigating the Plan 9 Operating System - OSNews.com

[David Leimbach]

On 7/23/06, Christoph Lohmann <20h@r-36.net> wrote:
> Good morning.
>
> Am Sun, 23 Jul 2006 16:40:40 -0700 schrieb "David Leimbach"
> <leimy2k@gmail.com>:
>
> > I just get REALLY tired, as I'm sure many people do, when you go to
> > read something reviewing an OS that you know about, just to see what
> > the reactions are going to be, and find it full of errors.
>
> > [...] (I'm not an expert btw) [...]
>
> > A lot of what's wrong with the image of Plan 9 is that people "just
> > don't get it".
>
> Where is your article?
>

I keep my learning experiences over @ http://mordor.tip9ug.jp/who/leimy

I found all the introductory setup material I needed on our wiki, and
from being involved and asking questions either on IRC (some of which
were met with both appropriate and seemingly inappropriate RTFMs at
the time) or on 9fans.

I doubt I could do a better job than some of the papers that already
exist by Ron Minnich or Charles Forsyth on why Plan 9 is relevant.
However as I learned things that weren't obvious I've always been
willing to share that information.

Dave

> Sincerely,
>
> Christoph
>

Re: [9fans] Investigating the Plan 9 Operating System - OSNews.com

[John Floren]

On 7/24/06, Bruce Ellis <bruce.ellis@gmail.com> wrote:
> i read through the slashdot stuff and saw no intelligence,
> i liked the slam on scroll. it hasn't changed in 20 years
> what's wrong? i can scroll a page or what i want, up or down.
> i can click for "take me to absosulte position".
>
> stupid arrows and thumb-flickers will never replace it, nice
> slow drop shadows too.
>
> and why is it that it's on the left?  that's where you are typing.
>
> good to see that lunixes hate it.  4 million years they'll get it.
>
> brucee
Are you talking about the scroll bars on Plan 9? They seem to me to be
just like scroll bars on a plain old xterm, so I don't see what the
Slashdot morons would be slamming--oh wait, it's Slashdot.

John, Slashdot member (non-paying)
--
TANSTAAFL! (There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch!)

Re: Re: [9fans] Investigating the Plan 9 Operating System - OSNews.com

[andrey mirtchovski]

> Are you talking about the scroll bars on Plan 9? They seem to me to be
> just like scroll bars on a plain old xterm, so I don't see what the
> Slashdot morons would be slamming--oh wait, it's Slashdot.

slashdot is also the only place where people would be commenting how
restrictive the Plan 9 license is (sometimes even referring to the
1995 one, not even the 2000 one) while slamming the OS for not being
up-to-date with whatever the current fashions are. yesterday's
discussion was similar to a bunch of lemmings running around screaming
"persistent objects! persistent objects!"... it must be that the 20
year cycle has gotten us back to the days of OO again.

the most insight comes from the anonymous posters, damn cowards :)

Re: [9fans] Investigating the Plan 9 Operating System - OSNews.com

[Francisco J Ballesteros]

>
> IIANM Francisco Ballesteros is planning an introductory course to Plan 9
> at his university and asked the list about which points people do find
> most confusing and hardest to understand. Will this material be available?

Sure, just give me some time to finish at least a readable draft. The
one I have now is 160pgs or so. But I think I´ll need like one month more
to get it stable enough for others to read. And it´s for sure that I´ll have
to go over it many times more. But, for what it might be worth, count with
a url for the whole pdf as soon as I get one.

Nemo

Re: [9fans] Investigating the Plan 9 Operating System - OSNews.com

[John Floren]

On 7/25/06, Francisco J Ballesteros <nemo@lsub.org> wrote:
> >
> > IIANM Francisco Ballesteros is planning an introductory course to Plan 9
> > at his university and asked the list about which points people do find
> > most confusing and hardest to understand. Will this material be available?
>
> Sure, just give me some time to finish at least a readable draft. The
> one I have now is 160pgs or so. But I think I´ll need like one month more
> to get it stable enough for others to read. And it´s for sure that I´ll have
> to go over it many times more. But, for what it might be worth, count with
> a url for the whole pdf as soon as I get one.
>
> Nemo
>
Just saying that I'd be glad to read over/look through the preliminary
document and offer my suggestions. I am still quite new to Plan 9, so
I may be of some help in gaining a newbie's perspective. Oh, and if
you need a place to put the PDF, I have essentially unlimited
webspace, so I could put it up for you. There's always a mordor
account, too.

John
-- 
"The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers" -- Shakespeare, Henry VI

Re: [9fans] Investigating the Plan 9 Operating System - OSNews.com

[csant]

>> IIANM Francisco Ballesteros is planning an introductory course to Plan 9
>> at his university and asked the list about which points people do find
>> most confusing and hardest to understand. Will this material be  
>> available?
>
> Sure, just give me some time to finish at least a readable draft. The
> one I have now is 160pgs or so. But I think I´ll need like one month more
> to get it stable enough for others to read. And it´s for sure that I´ll  
> have to go over it many times more. But, for what it might be worth,
> count with a url for the whole pdf as soon as I get one.

Nice, looking forward to it. Thanks :)
/c

Re: Re: [9fans] Investigating the Plan 9 Operating System - OSNews.com

[Skip Tavakkolian]

>  I never would have
> thought in my younger days that I could even really afford the speed
> of ethernet I have at home, much less run a distributed OS like I can.

it takes the children of one revolution to start another revolution.  if you
tried to keep to last generation's expectations, you get something
like gopher; but when you ignore those limitations you'd get something
like www and mosaic.  gopher died of (licensing aside), keeping to old
assumptions: it was bandwidth efficient and didn't have frivolous
things like images.

to paraphrase a friend of mine, metcalf's and moore's law are on
our side.  start building distributed systems now.

Re: Re: [9fans] Investigating the Plan 9 Operating System - OSNews.com

[David Leimbach]

Heh, all I know is when I got my first Personal Computer (a TI-99/4a)
I was only 6 or 7 years old, and thought it was something like our
Atari 2600.

See, I wasn't deprived of having computing power at home, but I can
totally understand how people lusted after these things in the 70s and
80s.  Ever seen how dedicated people get to their HP calculators?

I guess my point is, even though I wasn't deprived of that stuff as a
kid I really do sometimes stop and think that I'm pretty lucky to be
able to have all this technology at my fingertips.  I never would have
thought in my younger days that I could even really afford the speed
of ethernet I have at home, much less run a distributed OS like I can.

The things I think are somewhat shameful is how people are tying to
treat the internet like a big truck when we all know it's a series of
tubes.

Dave

On 7/28/06, erik quanstrom <quanstro@quanstro.net> wrote:
> not to mention newspapers, magazines &c.  there are advantages
> to the net today that have nothing to do with the fact that they
> are new.
>
> - erik
>
> On Fri Jul 28 04:48:45 CDT 2006, harriha@mail.student.oulu.fi wrote:
> > On Thu, Jul 27, 2006 at 09:29:04PM -0500, erik quanstrom wrote:
> > > i don't think the evolution of the net (or computers for that matter)
> > > is a story of the good old days and constant regression or the
> > > converse.  i think it's a story of (slightly?  how pessamistic are
> > > you?) more advances than regressions.
> >
> > Depends also on how much you value the new things, I guess. It was
> > probably the masses that drew all kinds of companies along and now you
> > can contact many places, research products, get manuals and support etc.
> > Well.. sometimes you might.
>

Re: Re: [9fans] Investigating the Plan 9 Operating System - OSNews.com

[erik quanstrom]

heh.  the internet is just a bunch of tubes that al gore invented.

- erik

On Fri Jul 28 09:02:25 CDT 2006, leimy2k@gmail.com wrote:
>
> The things I think are somewhat shameful is how people are tying to
> treat the internet like a big truck when we all know it's a series of
> tubes.
>
> Dave

Re: Re: [9fans] Investigating the Plan 9 Operating System - OSNews.com

[andrey mirtchovski]

"ONE! TWO! FIVE!"
"Three, Sir!"
"THREE!"

kind of reminds you of a slashdot discussion, doesn't it? :)

Re: Re: [9fans] Investigating the Plan 9 Operating System - OSNews.com

[David Leimbach]

On 7/20/06, Ronald G Minnich <rminnich@lanl.gov> wrote:
> erik quanstrom wrote:
> > powerful, distributed namespace?  you mean like, uh, dns.
> >
> > dns can emulate everything that ndb provides except two-level
> > binding.
>
>
> this mess is kind of our fault though. If we'd get off our collective
> ass(es) and write stuff for osnews ... otherwise, the wikipedia effect
> applies.

I agree.  I just think that the value of these OSNews things is
overrated.  People are going to buy into what a clearly very new
person to Plan 9 has to say about it with almost no question.

How is a person supposed to separate the grain from the chaff when
web-journalism and blogs are at the quality they are?

>
> I've just (re)learned the hard way: successful research is about 99% PR,
> 1% real work. And, there are very, very successful and well-known
> researchers in this world who manage to make it 100% PR.

Yeah, V9FS needs some PR too, and advocacy I guess to get things into
other OSes.

>
> ron
> p.s. curmudgeon  A T lanl.gov gets to me to. You can guess why.
>

Yeah that's ok, apparently I'm an arrogant asshole :-).  I can live
with that...  As long as I can occasionally still be useful.

Dave

Re: Re: [9fans] Investigating the Plan 9 Operating System - OSNews.com

[csant]

> powerful, distributed namespace?  you mean like, uh, dns.
Ahh, thanks - I thought I was missing some arcane connection

:)

Re: Re: [9fans] Investigating the Plan 9 Operating System - OSNews.com

[Federico G. Benavento]

Of course, there are some errors in the article, but it seems to be well intentionated
maybe a more informated 9fan could write one a lot better, where is that 9fan?

> This author thinks GeForce is GForce too... Proofreeedingh ees hard I spose.

Note: this is an entry to our Alternative Arrogant Contest.

Federico G. Benavento

Re: Re: [9fans] Investigating the Plan 9 Operating System - OSNews.com

[erik quanstrom]

powerful, distributed namespace?  you mean like, uh, dns.

dns can emulate everything that ndb provides except two-level
binding.

- erik

On Wed Jul 19 17:39:03 CDT 2006, csant@csant.info wrote:
> > Oh it gets better:
>
> "UNIX's name server, BIND, has been replaced by ndb, which is easy to
> configure, much more secure, and is the partial basis for Plan 9's
> powerful, distributed name space."
>
> And since there *are* several bits and pieces of Plan 9 that I still do
> not grasp, and since private namespaces have also been brought up recently
> as something not every n00b gets right away: could anybody please explain
> to me what exactly the Plan 9 namespaces have to do with ndb?
>
> /c

Re: Re: [9fans] Investigating the Plan 9 Operating System - OSNews.com

[csant]

> Oh it gets better:

"UNIX's name server, BIND, has been replaced by ndb, which is easy to
configure, much more secure, and is the partial basis for Plan 9's
powerful, distributed name space."

And since there *are* several bits and pieces of Plan 9 that I still do
not grasp, and since private namespaces have also been brought up recently
as something not every n00b gets right away: could anybody please explain
to me what exactly the Plan 9 namespaces have to do with ndb?

/c

Re: Re: [9fans] Investigating the Plan 9 Operating System - OSNews.com

[David Leimbach]

Oh it gets better:

"Authentication is done using the Secstore client application. The
Secstore server exchanges encrypted passwords or hardware passkeys,
and stores sensitive information in memory."

I think they mean factotum.... sectore is what it sounds like... secure storage.

This author thinks GeForce is GForce too... Proofreeedingh ees hard I spose.



On 7/19/06, David Leimbach <leimy2k@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 7/19/06, csant <csant@csant.info> wrote:
> > http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=15235
> >
> > "Plan 9 is similar to UNIX in that is has a kernel, a command shell, and
> > various C compilers. It also has man pages and runs standard UNIX
> > applications like awk, emacs, cp, ls, and others"
> >
> > /c
> >
> My sides hurt...  stop it...
>