[9fans] Re: So, once I've got the OS up how do I...

[Jim Choate <ravage@ssz.com>]

On Wed, 7 Feb 2001, rob pike wrote:

> I'm a little disturbed by these questions.  It's not that I doubt
> you'll get asked them, it's that Plan 9 will lose any feature fight.
> What makes the system interesting is how it does things, not how many
> programs have been ported to it, how compatible it is with Linux, or
> how few picoseconds it takes to do a context switch.

I don't intend to present it as a feature fight. I'm planning to avoid any
sort of us/them dialog/diatribe. I've started this Hangar 18 project and
we've already got like 5 people. What I'm looking to do is make a list of
projects and issues that we need to address if we want Plan 9 to succeed.

I agree that the distributed features are one of the key feature, I
believe it will enable many of the things people have wanting to do for
years. I've personally been following Plan 9 since the early 90's. The
only(!) reason I moved to Linux in 1992 is that I saw no chance of a
change in the license.

Perhaps it'd help if I explained a little more of what I'm looking to do.

I want to try and get several people here in the Austin area with
dedicated high speed connections (I use ISDN 24*365 w/ a Class C at home)
to run Plan 9 servers, both file and process. The hope is to build a
distrubuted library of materials and services that people can use. I want
to allow at least Plan 9 and Linux users to be able to participate. There
are some additional ideas for projects at,

http://einstein.ssz.com/hangar18

Your fears are not unfounded. I've been fighting a battle within the Linux
user group who are so rabid anti-anything_not_Linux that it's nearly
unbelievable. Fortunately the majority of participants are interested and
at least admit the potential of a world, and possibly a personal use, with
Plan 9 in it. The group has agreed to host our Plan 9 meetings the last
Thu. of each month.

http://austinlug.org

> You can help propagate the message by talking about how the system
> works.  Tell stories about how the pieces fit together, how they solve
> problems by design rather than attack by overwhelming features.  It's
> a hard sell but it can be done.

Better yet, we hope to show them. Right now we'll have three machines at
the meeting on Thu. the 22'nd. I'm going to give away 10 CD's and do a
install. Then the other couple of guys are going to do some networking and
demo the user interface. Then I've got to figure out what feature I need
to do each month for about the next six months.

As to applications, I agree 100%. I'm a physics geek, not a computer geek,
and I want to do things with the thing. A computer is a fancy wrench. Not sit
arounda and talk about how pretty it is...;) This was one of the reasons I
asked the host of questions. I'm trying to figure out what I need to dance
around while at the same time keeping it interesting and usefull.

    ____________________________________________________________________

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