Re: [9fans] novel userspace paradigms introduced by plan 9

[Eli Cohen <echoline@gmail.com>]

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I have used gentoo extensively and plan9 for a few years now as well, and
this concept of "namespaces" for processes is a confusing but interesting
concept.  maybe you could use grsec to limit the access to gentoo's "file
system" at a per-process level.  This would be somewhat similar to what
plan9 does, but you'd have to also find a good way to bind a directory
elsewhere in the tree at a per-process level, unified with what was already
there (aka, hopefully NOT like mount -o bind).  This is only the tip of the
iceberg; plan9 does this per-process filesystem namespacing to set up a good
environment for a system which adheres to the orginal unix "philosophies"
such as, everything has a "file" to represent it.  linux does this well for
data on the disk, device nodes, and whatever gets put in /proc.  it does not
do this, generally, for something like an email message.  a good plan9
program, however, is likely to do this.
as an example of the power of this concept, `% topng < /dev/screen >
screenshot.png' will use the relatively simple program topng to convert the
*file* /dev/screen into the *file* screenshot.png.
One major difference is X11.  In plan9, the system handles the graphics more
directly.  network export of windows is handled differently.  it might be
interesting to make a rio for linux which draws directly to /dev/fb0.  Or it
might be better to convert /dev/fb0 to a /dev/screen on linux, even in
userspace, and then more or less use rio for plan9.  performance might be an
issue, but plan9 people are still waiting on 3d graphics if they even care
enough to wait...

-Eli

On Sat, Jul 2, 2011 at 10:24 AM, Jack Johnson <knapjack@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Sat, Jul 2, 2011 at 8:29 AM, dexen deVries <dexen.devries@gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > disclaimer: i'm not a plan 9 person for any viable value of `p9 person'
>
> I'm in the same boat, but I aspire to be in the other boat. :)
>
> -Jack
>
>

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