[9fans] Plan9 for a newbie

[9fans] Plan9 for a newbie

[Jim Ford]

O.K., I've got Plan 9 running as a guest on XP using Qemu. Seems to run 
fine and is not unusably slow. I'm at the stage of:

"Hmm, not sure what's going on here - it's all pretty different to Linux 
(which I'm quite familiar with). I'm sure there must be interesting 
things to find out, but I don't really know where to start"

I need some guidance to take me to:

"Gosh, I quite like this way of doing things, let's find out more!"

and hopefully to:

"Wow, this is mind blowing - why don't all O.S.es do it this way?"

Can anyone suggest things that I might try to give me a sense of what 
Plan 9 is all about, please?

Jim Ford

Re: [9fans] Plan9 for a newbie

[erik quanstrom]

it's hard to suggest a starting point.  there are documents in
/sys/doc.  perhaps the first couple to tackle might be

	for(i in /sys/doc/^(9.ps net/net.ps plumb.ps utf.ps auth.ps)) page $i

- erik

RE: [9fans] Plan9 for a newbie

[Gabriel Díaz]

Hello

You can read the wiki pages to get some ideas, for example:

http://plan9.bell-labs.com/wiki/plan9/what_do_people_like_about_Plan_9/index
.html

And the documentation in /sys/doc on your plan9 installation.


slds
gabi

-----Mensaje original-----
De: 9fans-bounces+gabidiaz=gmail.com@cse.psu.edu
[mailto:9fans-bounces+gabidiaz=gmail.com@cse.psu.edu] En nombre de Jim Ford
Enviado el: jueves, 08 de marzo de 2007 21:33
Para: 9fans@cse.psu.edu
Asunto: [9fans] Plan9 for a newbie

O.K., I've got Plan 9 running as a guest on XP using Qemu. Seems to run 
fine and is not unusably slow. I'm at the stage of:

"Hmm, not sure what's going on here - it's all pretty different to Linux 
(which I'm quite familiar with). I'm sure there must be interesting 
things to find out, but I don't really know where to start"

I need some guidance to take me to:

"Gosh, I quite like this way of doing things, let's find out more!"

and hopefully to:

"Wow, this is mind blowing - why don't all O.S.es do it this way?"

Can anyone suggest things that I might try to give me a sense of what 
Plan 9 is all about, please?

Jim Ford

Re: [9fans] Plan9 for a newbie

[andrey mirtchovski]

is this anywhere visible on the wiki? i suppose it should be:

http://plan9.escet.urjc.es/usr/nemo/9.intro.pdf

"introduction to operating systems using Plan 9"

On 3/8/07, Gabriel Díaz <gabidiaz@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello
>
> You can read the wiki pages to get some ideas, for example:
>
> http://plan9.bell-labs.com/wiki/plan9/what_do_people_like_about_Plan_9/index
> .html
>
> And the documentation in /sys/doc on your plan9 installation.
>
>
> slds
> gabi
>
> -----Mensaje original-----
> De: 9fans-bounces+gabidiaz=gmail.com@cse.psu.edu
> [mailto:9fans-bounces+gabidiaz=gmail.com@cse.psu.edu] En nombre de Jim Ford
> Enviado el: jueves, 08 de marzo de 2007 21:33
> Para: 9fans@cse.psu.edu
> Asunto: [9fans] Plan9 for a newbie
>
> O.K., I've got Plan 9 running as a guest on XP using Qemu. Seems to run
> fine and is not unusably slow. I'm at the stage of:
>
> "Hmm, not sure what's going on here - it's all pretty different to Linux
> (which I'm quite familiar with). I'm sure there must be interesting
> things to find out, but I don't really know where to start"
>
> I need some guidance to take me to:
>
> "Gosh, I quite like this way of doing things, let's find out more!"
>
> and hopefully to:
>
> "Wow, this is mind blowing - why don't all O.S.es do it this way?"
>
> Can anyone suggest things that I might try to give me a sense of what
> Plan 9 is all about, please?
>
> Jim Ford
>
>

Re: [9fans] Plan9 for a newbie

[Federico G. Benavento]

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you could also read nemo's into: http://plan9.escet.urjc.es/who/nemo/9.intro.pdf

have fun

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From: Jim Ford <jaford@watford53.freeserve.co.uk>
To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu
Subject: [9fans] Plan9 for a newbie
Date: Thu, 08 Mar 2007 20:32:57 +0000
Message-ID: <45F072F9.10903@watford53.freeserve.co.uk>

O.K., I've got Plan 9 running as a guest on XP using Qemu. Seems to run 
fine and is not unusably slow. I'm at the stage of:

"Hmm, not sure what's going on here - it's all pretty different to Linux 
(which I'm quite familiar with). I'm sure there must be interesting 
things to find out, but I don't really know where to start"

I need some guidance to take me to:

"Gosh, I quite like this way of doing things, let's find out more!"

and hopefully to:

"Wow, this is mind blowing - why don't all O.S.es do it this way?"

Can anyone suggest things that I might try to give me a sense of what 
Plan 9 is all about, please?

Jim Ford

Re: [9fans] Plan9 for a newbie

[ron minnich]

who needs command history?

grep something /dev/text

Also, I saw something in X11 lately. It was a desktop with a bunch of
xterms. When you resized one xterm, all the others resized so they all
remained tiled.

Plan 9 has had this for many years. Startup acme. Put win in the top
tagline. middle-click 6 or 7 tiimes. Not only do you get the same
thing, but you can trivially edit and do things in each window.

Try acme mail. Not perfect, but man it's faster than thunderbird. And
look at how it handles attachments. Very cool.

Start up a rio term window. Note that it is NOT a teletype attached to
a window, as in X11. After all, xterms have a baud rate. Just mouse
up, and note you can edit stuff.

Suppose you have a bunch of junk in a window, and you don't want to
see it, but you want the rest. On Unix, you type 'clear' and start
again. In the rio term window, just select a bunch of text, and delete
it.

Learn chords, like left-button-select, then middle. Then left, and
right. Very handy.

Run rio in a term window.

9fs sources. cd /n/sources. Have fun.

Run abaco. Note that you can tile web pages horizontally and
vertically. And you can see all the URLs ...

See how much code it takes to write a web browser in plan 9 -- look at
abaco source.

note there is no 'ftp' command. Who the heck needs ftp? Just run ftpfs. Done.

tarfs.

There's just so much stuff there. Check out acid -- see how it works.
See how it's built. Then wonder "why isn't every debugger built this
way".

man plumber.

The list is pretty endless. It just shows that with the right starting
point, you can do so much better than linux or x11 or all the stuff we
take for granted. I get really angry sometimes, using Linux. In fact I
just broke the U key on this laptop 2 days ago -- typed just a little
too hard and off it went. Now there's just a funny little blue thing
where U used to be.

thanks

ron

Re: [9fans] Plan9 for a newbie

[erik quanstrom]

this only works if you're interested in a command from a few minutes
ago.  i often find myself searching for the same command a couple of 
days later at a different terminal.  in /n/sources/contrib/quanstro there
is a history program history.c that works with rc-history.tbz or futharc.tbz.
(rc with history and a break statement.  very fancy.)

i guess now i've blown my plan 9 cred.  ;-)

- erik

On Thu Mar  8 16:41:35 EST 2007, rminnich@gmail.com wrote:
> who needs command history?
> 
> grep something /dev/text

Re: [9fans] Plan9 for a newbie

[Federico G. Benavento]

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I like to show this rc script to newbies
http://plan9.bell-labs.com/sources/contrib/fgb/rc/telnet
yes, Plan 9 is this powerful

Federico G. Benavento

---
/bin/fortune:
When the going gets tough, the tough go shopping.

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From: "ron minnich" <rminnich@gmail.com>
To: "Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs" <9fans@cse.psu.edu>
Subject: Re: [9fans] Plan9 for a newbie
Date: Thu, 8 Mar 2007 14:40:10 -0700
Message-ID: <13426df10703081340u4a6fdbc8w6ac44c0ceb12c63b@mail.gmail.com>

who needs command history?

grep something /dev/text

Also, I saw something in X11 lately. It was a desktop with a bunch of
xterms. When you resized one xterm, all the others resized so they all
remained tiled.

Plan 9 has had this for many years. Startup acme. Put win in the top
tagline. middle-click 6 or 7 tiimes. Not only do you get the same
thing, but you can trivially edit and do things in each window.

Try acme mail. Not perfect, but man it's faster than thunderbird. And
look at how it handles attachments. Very cool.

Start up a rio term window. Note that it is NOT a teletype attached to
a window, as in X11. After all, xterms have a baud rate. Just mouse
up, and note you can edit stuff.

Suppose you have a bunch of junk in a window, and you don't want to
see it, but you want the rest. On Unix, you type 'clear' and start
again. In the rio term window, just select a bunch of text, and delete
it.

Learn chords, like left-button-select, then middle. Then left, and
right. Very handy.

Run rio in a term window.

9fs sources. cd /n/sources. Have fun.

Run abaco. Note that you can tile web pages horizontally and
vertically. And you can see all the URLs ...

See how much code it takes to write a web browser in plan 9 -- look at
abaco source.

note there is no 'ftp' command. Who the heck needs ftp? Just run ftpfs. Done.

tarfs.

There's just so much stuff there. Check out acid -- see how it works.
See how it's built. Then wonder "why isn't every debugger built this
way".

man plumber.

The list is pretty endless. It just shows that with the right starting
point, you can do so much better than linux or x11 or all the stuff we
take for granted. I get really angry sometimes, using Linux. In fact I
just broke the U key on this laptop 2 days ago -- typed just a little
too hard and off it went. Now there's just a funny little blue thing
where U used to be.

thanks

ron

Re: [9fans] Plan9 for a newbie

[Joel Franusic]

Writing a "hello world" resulted in several "oh wow" moments for me...

On 3/8/07, Federico G. Benavento <benavento@gmail.com> wrote:
> I like to show this rc script to newbies
> http://plan9.bell-labs.com/sources/contrib/fgb/rc/telnet
> yes, Plan 9 is this powerful
>
> Federico G. Benavento
>
> ---
> /bin/fortune:
> When the going gets tough, the tough go shopping.
>
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: "ron minnich" <rminnich@gmail.com>
> To: "Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs" <9fans@cse.psu.edu>
> Date: Thu, 8 Mar 2007 14:40:10 -0700
> Subject: Re: [9fans] Plan9 for a newbie
> who needs command history?
>
> grep something /dev/text
>
> Also, I saw something in X11 lately. It was a desktop with a bunch of
> xterms. When you resized one xterm, all the others resized so they all
> remained tiled.
>
> Plan 9 has had this for many years. Startup acme. Put win in the top
> tagline. middle-click 6 or 7 tiimes. Not only do you get the same
> thing, but you can trivially edit and do things in each window.
>
> Try acme mail. Not perfect, but man it's faster than thunderbird. And
> look at how it handles attachments. Very cool.
>
> Start up a rio term window. Note that it is NOT a teletype attached to
> a window, as in X11. After all, xterms have a baud rate. Just mouse
> up, and note you can edit stuff.
>
> Suppose you have a bunch of junk in a window, and you don't want to
> see it, but you want the rest. On Unix, you type 'clear' and start
> again. In the rio term window, just select a bunch of text, and delete
> it.
>
> Learn chords, like left-button-select, then middle. Then left, and
> right. Very handy.
>
> Run rio in a term window.
>
> 9fs sources. cd /n/sources. Have fun.
>
> Run abaco. Note that you can tile web pages horizontally and
> vertically. And you can see all the URLs ...
>
> See how much code it takes to write a web browser in plan 9 -- look at
> abaco source.
>
> note there is no 'ftp' command. Who the heck needs ftp? Just run ftpfs. Done.
>
> tarfs.
>
> There's just so much stuff there. Check out acid -- see how it works.
> See how it's built. Then wonder "why isn't every debugger built this
> way".
>
> man plumber.
>
> The list is pretty endless. It just shows that with the right starting
> point, you can do so much better than linux or x11 or all the stuff we
> take for granted. I get really angry sometimes, using Linux. In fact I
> just broke the U key on this laptop 2 days ago -- typed just a little
> too hard and off it went. Now there's just a funny little blue thing
> where U used to be.
>
> thanks
>
> ron
>

Re: [9fans] Plan9 for a newbie

[Jack Johnson]

On 3/8/07, ron minnich <rminnich@gmail.com> wrote:
> The list is pretty endless.

Nice job, Ron!

This should be in Glenda's default inbox.

-Jack

Re: [9fans] Plan9 for a newbie

[Noah Evans]

I think what Plan 9 really needs is a screencast. If people could
actually *see* what it was like to use p9 they'd come running. Most
users coming from linux seem to get frustrated and move on quickly.

All you'd need to do then is add some gradients and rounded edges to
rio and acme.

Noah

On 3/9/07, Jack Johnson <knapjack@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 3/8/07, ron minnich <rminnich@gmail.com> wrote:
> > The list is pretty endless.
>
> Nice job, Ron!
>
> This should be in Glenda's default inbox.
>
> -Jack
>

RE: [9fans] Plan9 for a newbie

[cej]

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I hope I will NEVER see icons, gradients and rounded edges on Plan9: the day
they will appear within /n/sources will be the funeral day of Plan9 on my box -- i'm NOT joking. Let this crap to other OSes, and let's continue being "OS Ferrari", as labelled earlier by someone else (can't recall who). Plan9 should not try to be for everybody, for it is the safest way to HELL.
Just IMHO, as usually. Morover, if I was able to master the basics of using Plan9
, then everyone can. Remember, I'm not a computer man, I'm a biologist. Vevertheless, I like Plan9 design, enjoy using it on an everyday basis, I got rid of Windoze long time ago and maintaining a small Linux partition just for running a web browser  with all that crap stuff like javascript etcetc... pesting most of what in past days have been HTML 1.0 webpages.
When I'm able to install abaco and configure acme mail, i'll get rid of linux, too.

Best regards,
++pac.


-----Original Message-----
From: 9fans-bounces+cej=gli.cas.cz@cse.psu.edu on behalf of Noah Evans
Sent: Fri 3/9/2007 8:25 AM
To: Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs
Subject: Re: [9fans] Plan9 for a newbie
 
I think what Plan 9 really needs is a screencast. If people could
actually *see* what it was like to use p9 they'd come running. Most
users coming from linux seem to get frustrated and move on quickly.

All you'd need to do then is add some gradients and rounded edges to
rio and acme.

Noah

On 3/9/07, Jack Johnson <knapjack@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 3/8/07, ron minnich <rminnich@gmail.com> wrote:
> > The list is pretty endless.
>
> Nice job, Ron!
>
> This should be in Glenda's default inbox.
>
> -Jack
>


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Re: [9fans] Plan9 for a newbie

[John Floren]

On 3/8/07, ron minnich <rminnich@gmail.com> wrote:
> who needs command history?
>
> grep something /dev/text

As pointed out previously, that's kinda insufficient. I like being able to
look way back in my history. Sometimes I've forgotten an IP or something,
but I've saved myself by grepping my history.

> Also, I saw something in X11 lately. It was a desktop with a bunch of
> xterms. When you resized one xterm, all the others resized so they all
> remained tiled.

This isn't particularly new, but it is nice. I used ion3, a tiled window
manager, for quite some time, but I recently switched back to FVWM.
You'll notice that the Linux tiled WMs focus very strongly on keyboard
use--the idea is that you shouldn't have to touch your mouse for
WM stuff.

<snip>
> Run rio in a term window.

Coolest. Thing. Ever.

<snip>
> note there is no 'ftp' command. Who the heck needs ftp? Just run ftpfs. Done.

A most excellent command indeed! Actually one of my favorite Plan 9'isms.

Anyway, Ron, thanks for actually taking the time to make this list.
Most of the time, anyone who says "I'm new to Plan 9, what's the
deal with X" gets told "GO READ THESE TEN PAPERS, EVERY
PAGE ON THE WIKI, AND ALL THE MAN PAGES!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

Like Jack Johnson said, this list (perhaps expanded a bit) really
does belong in the glenda inbox.


John
-- 
Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn

Re: [9fans] Plan9 for a newbie

[Markus Sonderegger]

Hi,

Maybe here's the right place for my question. How can i do path
completion in rc? Like the Tab in sh. At Moment i use short filenames.
Is that the plan9 way?

Regards

Re: [9fans] Plan9 for a newbie

[Kris Maglione]

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On Fri, Mar 09, 2007 at 06:58:20AM +0000, Markus Sonderegger wrote:
>Maybe here's the right place for my question. How can i do path
>completion in rc? Like the Tab in sh. At Moment i use short filenames.
>Is that the plan9 way?

From rio, acme, or 9term, ^F works, regardless of the shell you're 
using (so long as they set their path on cd, and are in the same 
namespace. The default profile sets the cd fn to run awd).

-- 
Kris Maglione

The client who pays the least complains the most

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Re: [9fans] Plan9 for a newbie

[erik quanstrom]

for those who don't use ^m for newlines,
you can also use the insert key on pc keyboards. ;-)
this is built into rio and acme so the shell is a non
sequitor.  completion is not available at the console.

it is unfortunate that completion is tied to a fixed
namespace and unfortunately it's usually the wrong one.
(plumber has the same problem.)  the existance of 
awd hints at this problem.

there is enough information in /dev/$pid/ns.
but how would rio or acme know which $pid is executing?
 
- erik

> On Fri, Mar 09, 2007 at 06:58:20AM +0000, Markus Sonderegger wrote:
> From rio, acme, or 9term, ^F works, regardless of the shell you're 
> using (so long as they set their path on cd, and are in the same 
> namespace. The default profile sets the cd fn to run awd).

Re: [9fans] Plan9 for a newbie

[Charles Forsyth]

> At Moment i use short filenames. Is that the plan9 way?

you've got it!

if you're looking at files on another system that uses little essays (or java class hierarchies),
and you're using plan 9 directly or plan 9 ports, i gather that control-F
does something that you might find helpful, but i've only triggered
it by accident and don't know how people use it.

Re: [9fans] Plan9 for a newbie

[David Leimbach]

On 3/9/07, Charles Forsyth <forsyth@terzarima.net> wrote:
> > At Moment i use short filenames. Is that the plan9 way?
>
> you've got it!
>
> if you're looking at files on another system that uses little essays (or java class hierarchies),
> and you're using plan 9 directly or plan 9 ports, i gather that control-F
> does something that you might find helpful, but i've only triggered
> it by accident and don't know how people use it.
>
^F doesn't work in all situations either. Some newly mounted/binded
stuff may not work with ^F.

It's good for saving time some of the time though, when you must type.

Dave

Re: [9fans] Plan9 for a newbie

[C H Forsyth]

>^F doesn't work in all situations either. Some newly mounted/binded

if you're using plan9ports, sh's readline gets in the way.  you'll probably
want to use rc anyway though, because of what the idiots did to glob:
	rm [A-Z]*
(this idiocy might be standard, but it's still idiotic.)
hint: it's locale-dependent, some locales are case-independent,
and the end result is unprintable.  (use echo for experiment.)

Re: [9fans] Plan9 for a newbie

[Federico Benavento]

hola,

> ^F doesn't work in all situations either. Some newly mounted/binded
> stuff may not work with ^F.
>

there are ways to make it work everywhere, they might involve reading
man pages and other weird things like the wiki, specially the tip'o the
day page.

-- 
Federico G. Benavento

Re: [9fans] Plan9 for a newbie

[John Stalker]

I will probably get flamed for writing this, but I will go ahead anyway.
It's not accidental that early public versions of UNIX were Programmers'
Workbench and Document Writers' Workbench.  UNIX then and plan9 now are
really optimised for those two uses.  Acme(1), for example is wonderful
for either set of users.  Acid(1) is very appropriately named, in terms
of how much it can expand a programmer's perception of reality.  If you
aren't writing code or documentation though then you are basically left
with a cute bunny and not much else.  Note that this is not a gripe,
simply an observation.

> O.K., I've got Plan 9 running as a guest on XP using Qemu. Seems to run 
> fine and is not unusably slow. I'm at the stage of:
> 
> "Hmm, not sure what's going on here - it's all pretty different to Linux 
> (which I'm quite familiar with). I'm sure there must be interesting 
> things to find out, but I don't really know where to start"
> 
> I need some guidance to take me to:
> 
> "Gosh, I quite like this way of doing things, let's find out more!"
> 
> and hopefully to:
> 
> "Wow, this is mind blowing - why don't all O.S.es do it this way?"
> 
> Can anyone suggest things that I might try to give me a sense of what 
> Plan 9 is all about, please?
> 
> Jim Ford
-- 
John Stalker
School of Mathematics
Trinity College Dublin
tel +353 1 896 1983
fax +353 1 896 2282