On Mon, Oct 11, 2010 at 12:07 PM, Robert Raschke <rtrlists@googlemail.com>wrote:

>
> On Mon, Oct 11, 2010 at 10:05 AM, Mark Carter <alt.mcarter@gmail.com>wrote:
>
>> I was reading the suckless.org website the other day, and they seemed
>> quite keen on Plan 9. I am running Linux. Is there a useful summary
>> document that explains where plan9port fits in with Glendix, and why
>> anyone should care about Plan 9 anyway (hope that doesn't come across
>> as rude)?
>>
>>
> Most of the people who can answer best are currently at the Plan 9 Workshop
> (http://www.iwp9.org/), so they'll doubtless chip in a wee bit later.
>
> Plan 9 is a research OS that has had a quite amazing impact on most other
> Unix type OSes. For example: UTF-8, process filesystem (generalised to "use
> a filesystem as a well defined abstraction mechanism"), recursive window
> systems (ie. a full windowing system inside a window, not 100% sure who did
> it first, but the Plan 9 one is amazingly consistent and so easy to use it
> makes others look clunky), and full historical filesystem (remember
> everything you ever did using snapshots).
>
> Plan 9 is not a polished end user OS!
>
> Robby
>
>
Oh, and most of the Plan 9 tools were first made available to use outside
the Plan 9 OS through Russ Cox's plan9 in user space effort (
http://swtch.com/plan9port/). And there's the virtualisation project vx32
that includes Plan 9 as an example. Not sure how they fit into a holistic
view. They're more like pragmatic ways forward when you can't (or don't want
to) run a stand alone OS.

One of the great things in Plan 9 is the readability of the code. You can
actually dive in and see how it all works without needing an augmented
brain. Although it may require adjusting your thinking to a "let's try to
manage all this complexity a bit better" mindframe. And that can take a bit
of time and effort. But it's well worth it.

Robby