From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Joel Salomon To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu Cc: "Eric S. Raymond" Subject: Re: [9fans] book chapters In-Reply-To: <001601c33c91$249f4cd0$2a8be793@gli.cas.cz> Message-Id: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Date: Fri, 27 Jun 2003 18:08:13 -0400 Topicbox-Message-UUID: df690100-eacb-11e9-9e20-41e7f4b1d025 On Fri, 27 Jun 2003, pac wrote: > folks! > i'd like to hear your comments on these: > > http://catb.org/~esr/writings/taoup/html/plan9.html like matt said. > http://catb.org/~esr/writings/taoup/html/ch20s03.html > > regards, > ++pac. I may not be the best person to do this but... * A Unix File is Just a Big Bag of Bytes Plan 9 keeps this model, but avoids *some* of the problems esr points out - I'll mention these is turn * Unix Support For GUIs Is Weak. Rio. Acme. It's not the "point and drool" of the macintosh, but is internally consistent, convenient once you get used to it, and *very well* integrated into the resr of the system, especially since many "interesting" services (tcp/ip, mail, ftp, cd writing, etc.) implement the file system interface * File Deletion Is Forever File Creation Is Forever :-) * Unix Assumes a Static File System I'm out of my depths here - anyone able to answer this? * The Design of Job Control was Badly Botched Rio. 'nuff said. * The Unix API Doesn't Use Exceptions http://groups.google.com/groups?dq=&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&frame=right&th=7d07c12c4a19c45e&seekm=bf8367f8234d6dcb8847b6fd73d7f020%40plan9.escet.urjc.es or search for "exception" on comp.os.plan9 where this subject has been discused ad nauseum * ioctl(2) and fcntl(2) are an embarrassment That's why Plan9 doesn't have them! * The Unix Security Model May Be Too Primitive Plan 9 dosn't have a superuser account, but has anyone found the lack of ACLs limiting? * Unix has Too Many Different Kinds of Names And he gives plan9 credit for unifying them. (but he mentions per-user dynamically adjustable namespaces - I'm sure he was in error here, but *is* there a way to simultaneously adjust the namespace of *all* my processes? Perhaps with nemo's redirfs & badsrv underneath everything...) * File Systems Might Be Considered Harmful Then he goes on to say that "no major production operating system has yet followed EROS's lead". * Towards A Global Internet Address Space Yup, we've got that too. In fact the model esr proposes is... Plan 9! Did I leave anything out? --Joel