Re: [9fans] Investigating the Plan 9 Operating System - OSNews.com

[csant <csant@csant.info>]

> The article was meant as a brief exposure of Plan 9 for people who may
> have had little to no exposure to "alternative" operating systems and
> as such its point was not to delve deeply into issues. The intent was
> more to open a door to concepts that people without a computer science
> degree might not have been exposed to.

This is a very noble intention - but, alas, that is not enough, IMHO. On
the contrary... mis-information to those that do not know, is much worse
than no info at all. Those that have not been exposed to Plan 9 previously
might get a very wrong first impression, and what is worse, wrong
expectations.

I myself am very new to Plan 9 - but constant reading helps a lot. And
actually *trying out* stuff, playing with the system. Have you tried to
run emacs? That simple test would have helped not to raise hopes of
misinformed users. And it is very dangerous to start talking about stuff
you do not completely understand: namespaces, in Plan 9, don't have
anything to do with the network database. Yes, namespaces are confusing:
it has been recently mentioned by several, on this list.

I myself am struggeling with understanding how Plan 9 works - and when you
threw ndb in one pot with namespaces, I got even more confused. Your
article mis-informs, and consfuses.

> I pulled all of my materials from
> the available Plan 9 web sources. Which by the way are mostly dead
> links now.

Some private projects might well be dead - but as far as I can tell, the
URLs on the web site and in the wiki work mostly fine. At least, that's
where I collected my info from...

> Considering that MS
> VPC is free, completely skirts most driver compatibility issues, and
> could greatly increase Plan 9 trials you would think someone might
> publish a FAQ for nubes. But there isn't one.

You could start one :) The wiki has a FAQ, and maybe more answers to more
questions could be added there, if you miss some. The more people
contribute to documentation, and divulgation, the better it is for Plan 9.
But documentation and divulgation has to be correct. If you don't
understand something, leave it to somebody else. Or investigate, until you
*do* know something.

> How
> do you convey the deep concepts of Plan 9 to someone who doesn't have
> 5+ years of large scale system admin experience, or a Master's degree
> in Computer Science?

IIANM Francisco Ballesteros is planning an introductory course to Plan 9
at his university and asked the list about which points people do find
most confusing and hardest to understand. Will this material be available?

/c (a n00b's two cents...)