Re: [9fans] What are you using Plan 9 for?

[Rui Carmo <rui.carmo@gmail.com>]

I’m late to the thread, but this seems like a good point to step in.

I’m using plan9 on a quad-core Raspberry Pi as a sort of universal terminal to manage some of my home machines, and recently deleted the 9front VM I had on my home KVM server because even though the programming model and Go support were nice, most of my day-to-day work is on cloud solutions and there was no easy way to make those co-exist with Plan9 usage.

There were a few discussions in this thread around dev stacks, browsers, etc., and my $0.02 on that is that I could probably work in Plan9 on a daily basis _if_ it had a usable (i.e., all the warts including JavaScript and fonts) web browser, but that the lack of alignment (intended or otherwise) with Linux tools and app stacks (SSH, Node, Python, Java) would make it very painful.

Running a remote browser (which is what I do often in that Pi) sort of works, but you never get the full benefits you’d get with a native process. And lack of access to modern app stacks renders the platform unattractive for mainstream development work.

But what killed it for me was the need for chording (mouse or keys). Using a modern trackpad on a MacBook or Surface device is a quantum leap beyond using a mouse for general use, and the lack of a modernised Rio with enough thoughtful design to overcome the differences in philosophy is the first barrier to continued usage.

Acme is something I miss on occasion, but modern GUI editors compensate in other ways (at the expense of resource usage, etc., but with a massive boost in productivity for me). Also, I’m typing this on an iMac 5K with nearly unmatched font rendering and legibility (the only thing that comes close is the Surface Pro alongside it). Visuals matter a great deal.

There is an unmatchable degree of purity in Plan9, but (even though the diehards will stick their ground and claim it’s perfect to the exclusion of other modern comforts) to coexist successfully it has to provide more affordances.

Kind Regards,

R.

> On 14 Jun 2018, at 04:53, 刘宇宝 <liuyubao@yingmi.cn> wrote:
> 
> Compared to "not for you", "don't care",  "intend to not be successful", I like more the topic of cat-v irc channel on freenode set by aiju:  "fun fact: you can use multiple operating systems at the same time".
> 
> Certainly Plan 9 can't replace Linux/macOS/BSD/Windows, I'm still curious its upper bound for a sensible daily usage,  and the best practice from you happy experienced Plan 9 users.
> 
> I checked mail headers in this mailing list, seems all use Apple Mail, iPhone Mail, WebMail with AJAX, Gmail(a lot), ProtonMail,  these emails went through Postfix and Exim servers, probably on Linux.
> 
> In great harmony, we use kinds of operating system and kinds of software on them.
> 
> Regards,
> Yubao Liu
> 
>> On Jun 14, 2018, at 10:53 AM, N. S. Montanaro <nsm@airmail.cc> wrote:
>> 
>> I think a lot of people discover Plan 9 and want it to be something it isn’t, rather than stumble upon it out of necessity. As the FQA says, “Plan 9 is not for you."
>