Re: [9fans] Help for home user discovering Plan 9

[Balwinder S Dheeman <bdheeman@gmail.com>]

On 04/18/2009 01:02 AM, Gorka Guardiola wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 17, 2009 at 3:14 PM, Balwinder S Dheeman <bdheeman@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Please set aside rare cases and let us know who except for the students,
>> teachers and, or researchers uses Plan9 and, or Inferno in the offices,
>> homes and, or cafes and for what?
>>
>> The Plan9 project started in 1980, took around 9 years to be solid
>> enough to be usable and that too by the internal and, or lab people
>> [http://plan9.bell-labs.com/sys/doc/9.html] only. Whereas, the FreeBSD
>> and, or Linux (though not an OS or Unix variant in a sense) came into
>> existence later in 1993 and 1991 respectively are more popular among any
>> other variants of Unix.
>
> That is the difference between coming up with a design an rethinking the
> system and just copying one and porting software already written. Linux
> started mostly using all the gnu stuff and copied all the design from already
> existing Unix things. That of course takes less than rethinking
> everything carefully
> from scratch. For example UTF. Among other things.
>
> That said what is the points of this discussions?. Use whatever you want
> and have fun. I use 4 or 5 operating systems
> for different things. One of them is Plan 9. Not only for teaching but
> as infrastructure
> For example this is the CMS for our courses:
> http://lsub.org/magic/group?o=i&g=c
> And we ran several labs which runs diskless for teaching and so.
> This infrastructure serves hundreds of students. I can even have 100 computers
> running diskless with students with daily automatic incremental backups (venti)
> using the CMS (yes, with abaco) and compiling and running programs
> at the same time against one file server. Try that with *any* other
> operating system
> (and our hardware infrastructure).
>
> Then again, that may not be "solid enough" for you. I happen to work
> at a University, sorry.
>
> I also run Mac OS and use it for web browsing. Windows for several
> devices (like a USB sniffer) which I don't have drivers nor I do I
> feel like writing.
> Linux in my illiad ebook.
> And inferno/octopus for integrating all this stuff into a usable environment.
> And some time even others.
>
> If Plan 9 is not useful for you nor you get how it can be, good, don't use it.
>
> For me it is.

Again, but that's only a rare case, sorry.

I understand your sentiments well, because I also worked as a lecturer
for about 4 years and I managed to setup such an environment based on
Linux systems there; that's not a production deployment for any
commercial and, or industrial use cases.

Let me repeat that the question is/was, "Who uses Plan9 in the Offices,
homes and, or cafes for commercial and, or industrial application".

I'm not against using, spreading, technology and, or philosophy behind
Plan9, but am curious to know some solid example cases; no doubt yours
is one such case though again only educational and, or research related.

Please don't tell/dictate me what I should and, or should't I use.

--
Balwinder S "bdheeman" Dheeman        Registered Linux User: #229709
Anu'z Linux@HOME (Unix Shoppe)        Machines: #168573, 170593, 259192
Chandigarh, UT, 160062, India         Plan9, T2, Arch/Debian/FreeBSD/XP
Home: http://cto.homelinux.net/~bsd/  Visit: http://counter.li.org/