Re: [9fans] sad commentary

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

Hi 9fans,

I'm writing this in an "open letter" style because I find eric's original
post and the follow-up quite "on-topic" with respect to my unsuccessful
Plan 9 experience. To provide context, let me describe myself as a "serious
hobbyist," which means I know my way around Windows and at least 2 other
(UNIX-like) OS's--I can set up a reasonably secure sendmail and BIND
installation, write a little Perl or C program to do my bidding, and
wouldn't gawk at you if you talked about using xmllint to check a
document's well-formedness but I'm not a kernel "hacker" or a "hacker" of
any sort for that matter. I can Get My Personal Job Done (tm) but you
wouldn't hire me as an admin.

When I downloaded the Plan 9 4e ISO image I thought to myself "one more OS
adventure." It turned out to be a very frustrating one. Plan 9 wouldn't
work fine, or work at all, on a number of freeware virtualization platforms
which I am "sure" weren't especially rigged to run the other OS's they
happened to run fine. It eventually worked on QEMU. Since I'm a "serious"
hobbyist "bad" installation experience is hardly a deterrent to me--not
anymore.

When I came to actually "use" Plan 9 I found out the two interfaces I'd
heard about, i.e. rc and rio, are both awkward despite how everybody on
9fans thought they were such glorious climaxes of simplicity and usability
and how everybody would bash Bash. If I were to save one interface (textual
or graphical) out of all interfaces that exist today that'd be Bash.
Perhaps I'm a brainwashed FSF zombie in thinking so but I am once again
"sure" rc or rio won't even be on my top ten list and that's no FSF zombie
attitude.

Some 9fans members may remember my original zeal to participate in 9fans
and learn about Plan 9. That zeal was subdued when I went through the first
few chapters of Francisco Ballesteros' fine book. Since then I've only been
quietly reading 9fans posts and "not" using Plan 9.

I believe this reasoning from Eris Raymond's "The Art of UNIX Programming"
(a book that is more than a little on the snob side, by the way) is mutatis
mutandis appropriate:

"The long view of history may tell a different story, but in 2003 it looks
like Plan 9 failed simply because it fell short of being a compelling
enough improvement on Unix to displace its ancestor. Compared to Plan 9,
Unix creaks and clanks and has obvious rust spots, but it gets the job done
well enough to hold its position. There is a lesson here for ambitious
system architects: the most dangerous enemy of a better solution is an
existing codebase that is just good enough."

--20.2 Plan 9: The Way the Future Was

Let me say that Plan 9 didn't seem to me, as a user and not a "hacker," to
even cover any meaningful "rust spots," for example, of FreeBSD. Rio is
actually a failure despite whatever the 9fans people and Rob Pike may say.
Fossil/Venti, however brilliant it may look like to the code junkie, does
not offer anything for me but added complexity. Plan 9 neither fulfills
previous functions nor defines new ones for any "end user" or even
"hobbyist," except perhaps the most sturdy of them. It is probably a
wonderful research platform for computer science students but it cannot and
will not support even the simpler tasks a student of, say, mathematics
expects of their PC these days, e.g. symbolically solving an equation
system (without going through implementing or porting a computer algebra
system or learning some twisted Lisp, of course). Good software--to a
mathematics student--like Maple will never become available on Plan 9, as
it did on Linux, and for the third time I am "sure" this isn't because
Maplesoft has any special affiliation with the Linux people. It's simply
because Plan 9 is not the user's OS, it isn't even the geek's OS, or the
nerd's OS, it is only the CS/CE OS Design student's OS, with a little
margin kept to accommodate a few sturdy geeks and professionals interested
in special applications.

In fact, I suspect Bell/Lucent made Plan 9 publicly available because they
found no better use for it. Plan 9 was not released to the public, instead
"jettisoned" into the public's care. Of course, this "accusation" of mine
remains as undocumented as any conspiracy theory but I'm inclined to
believe it.

No one should wonder why Plan 9 isn't remembered or used even in such geeky
communities as Slashdot. It just isn't "our" kind of OS and by "us" I mean
lowlifes like me in contrast to the "grand exalted" Plan 9 user.

Best wishes,
Eris Discordia

P.S. Heck, this "is" some sad commentary.