Re: [9fans] Help for home user discovering Plan 9

[Eris Discordia <eris.discordia@gmail.com>]

I don't know if it's because of bashfulness or what that people aren't
telling it to your face: Plan 9 is not intended for home or home office. It
hasn't matured to that point and its age is already past when it had a
chance to mature. From what I've read on this list it probably serves as
the back-end so some useful SOHO (and embedded?) applications, in addition
to research and probably industrial use, but I don't think it's the
front-end to any. These people who use it--I don't--all are either very
much interested in computer systems or simply students, professors,
researchers, and/or employees in the field.

You can try using Plan 9--I did and was dejected because learning about
computers is for me only a pleasant aside to actual use of computers--but I
don't think you can get much from it by way of productivity, unless you
intend to get productive in software engineering and/or computer science.

--On Tuesday, April 14, 2009 2:05 PM +0800 Jim Habegger
<jimhabegger@gmail.com> wrote:

> We have three Windows laptops in our family. I've been using free
> software systems off and on for years. Last week I learned about Plan
> 9 from Bell Labs, from someone in a Linux Questions forum. Now I have
> it installed on a partition on my laptop, along with XP,
> Ubuntu-on-NTFS, Debian, and Slackware. I've learned to access a fat
> partition, change the font size, and use Acme. Now I need to learn how
> to set up a wireless connection to the family router network, access
> my files on my wife's Vista laptop, and browse the Internet.
>
> My wireless card is not listed in Plan9.ini. Does that mean there's no
> way for me to connect with that card?
>
> I'd like to learn how much I can use Plan 9 for home office,
> multimedia and Internet socializing, then I'd like to experiment with
> distributing the system between computers. I've learned about as much
> as I can for now from the documentation on the Plan 9 site, except for
> how to connect to the network. I'm waiting to find out if it's even
> possible.
>
> Now I'm listing /bin, reading man pages, and practicing commands.
> After that I might have some questions. Meanwhile, does anyone have
> any suggestions about learning to use Plan 9 for home office,
> multimedia and Internet socializing, and then to learn more about
> networking and distributed systems?
>