[9fans] Future of Plan9

[9fans] Future of Plan9

[Stephen Adam]

Hi all...  I was completely ignorant of the existence of Plan9 until a few
days ago.  It looks very interesting...

Has anyone done an analysis of its long term prospects?  I'd love to read
about that.

How many large Plan9 sites are active?

Thanks,

[9fans] Re: Future of Plan9

[Deztroyer-a1]

One thing I can be sure is that plan 9 won't be as popular as linux. It is
because the design on plan9; It is a distributed computing environment
rather than a client/server one. Be sure to check out the official web site
of plan 9, you might found some more interesting stuff on there.

Future of plan 9? In my opinion, with a little modification on Plan 9, it'll
be great. However, plan 9 is just the same as concorde; not a very succesful
commerical product I think. However, I enjoy using plan 9 myself. It's a
little bit too "scientific" if it is to server as a commerical product.

There're heaps of web page in plan 9 (the play one), I don't see much on the
one you're talking about (OS) though :-) Check out the links on the web site
of plan 9 on bell labs's server. I think they've got some links over there,
I think.

People use linux because it can be serve as a personal computer. That's the
original design of unix. All those features that are available in linux/unix
are added onto the system afterwards. Plan 9 and linux/unix are in different
design. If you're looking for a personal computing enviroment, linux/unix
will do the job better (as they've got more applications and stuff like
that). You're into distributed computing? have a go on plan 9 then.

I've heard that Red Hat linux is gonna develop a distributed version of
linux. Not sure whether it is as good as plan 9 or not. But I'll always
stand on the side of plan 9. As I am not very into linux.

Good Luck

Alexander C. Deztroyer
Stephen Adam <saadam@bigpond.com> wrote in message
news:xbIZ5.157945$e5.114349@newsfeeds.bigpond.com...
> Hi all...  I was completely ignorant of the existence of Plan9 until a few
> days ago.  It looks very interesting...
>
> Has anyone done an analysis of its long term prospects?  I'd love to read
> about that.
>
> How many large Plan9 sites are active?
>
> Thanks,

Re: [9fans] Re: Future of Plan9

[Boyd Roberts]

From: Deztroyer-a1 <alex-sci@freenet.co.nz>
To: <9fans@cse.psu.edu>
Sent: Thursday, December 14, 2000 8:49 PM
Subject: [9fans] Re: Future of Plan9


> One thing I can be sure is that plan 9 won't be as popular as linux. It is
> because the design on plan9; It is a distributed computing environment
> rather than a client/server one. Be sure to check out the official web site
> of plan 9, you might found some more interesting stuff on there.

a true gem.

[9fans] Re: Future of Plan9

[Randolph Fritz]

On Thu, 14 Dec 2000 09:49:14 GMT, Deztroyer-a1 <alex-sci@freenet.co.nz> wrote:
>One thing I can be sure is that plan 9 won't be as popular as linux. It is
>because the design on plan9; It is a distributed computing environment
>rather than a client/server one. Be sure to check out the official web site
>of plan 9, you might found some more interesting stuff on there.
>
>Future of plan 9? In my opinion, with a little modification on Plan 9, it'll
>be great. However, plan 9 is just the same as concorde; not a very succesful
>commerical product I think. However, I enjoy using plan 9 myself. It's a
>little bit too "scientific" if it is to server as a commerical product.
>

I think that Plan 9 is an ideal platform for ubiquitous computing; I
could easily imagine a Plan 9 server as the core of a household
network.  Inferno, based on similar technology, is working in telephone
switches right now.

It's also excellent for large, loosely-coupled multi-processor
networks; when those are implemented using Linux, they invariably
drown in excess (and costly) hardware.  One of these days (but
probably not soon, sigh) I want to make serious use of it in lighting
modelling.

Randolph

[9fans] Re: Future of Plan9

[vecera]

I like Plan9, I think it has good draft - networking, security,
namespace (good idea!)...
But now it needs applications.

BTW: Is anybody going to port tcl/tk lib to Plan9? Or anything else
which
will make easy to create menus and buttons and others in apps?

vecera


Sent via Deja.com
http://www.deja.com/

Re: [9fans] Re: Future of Plan9

[Steve Kilbane]

> I like Plan9, I think it has good draft - networking, security,
> namespace (good idea!)...
> But now it needs applications.

It already has some. Or do you mean, "applications that I want to
use"? That's generally harder to fulfil, for any value of "I".

The application card usually means that someone wants to do on
Plan 9 what they already do on their PC. Getting into specifics,
this needs file-format compatibility and/or user-interface
familiarity. What's the point? It's easier and cheaper for the
majority to just use a PC.

On the other hand, if "application" is interpreted as
"functionality which fits in the same niche", without being obsessed
with compatibility, then fair enough. Plan 9 already has some such
applications; where there are gaps, there are opportunities to
reconsider what a user in that niche really needs.

> BTW: Is anybody going to port tcl/tk lib to Plan9? Or anything else
> which
> will make easy to create menus and buttons and others in apps?

This is my point: acme doesn't use menus or buttons, and it doesn't
need tcl or tk to produce applications which use it as the user
interface. But it does affect the style of interface you can have.
acme doesn't have graphics, so you can't do a WYSIWYG text processor,
but you could provide an interface to a TeX system with all sorts of
nifty tools. So the question is not what you think you need, but what
do you *really* need?

steve

Re: [9fans] Re: Future of Plan9

[William Staniewicz]

On Wed, Dec 20, 2000 at 12:58:51AM +0000, Steve Kilbane wrote:
> > I like Plan9, I think it has good draft - networking, security,
> > namespace (good idea!)...
> > But now it needs applications.

I am still very much at the early learning stage of understanding the
full potential of plan9. But on a gut level, the word that comes to mind
is "minimalism". What I mean by this is that if something is not really
needed, why have it. Acme is cool too. I use MWM on my FreeBSD partition and like it for
being simple. Eventually, I would like to set up a home network
and run it as it was designed but for now I am just getting a feel
for the terrain. It might be fun to have something like "micq"
but it's not necessary.

Bill

Re: [9fans] Re: Future of Plan9

[Alexander C. Deztroyer]

> I am still very much at the early learning stage of understanding the
> full potential of plan9. But on a gut level, the word that comes to mind
> is "minimalism". What I mean by this is that if something is not really
> needed, why have it. Acme is cool too. I use MWM on my FreeBSD partition
and like it for
> being simple. Eventually, I would like to set up a home network
> and run it as it was designed but for now I am just getting a feel
> for the terrain. It might be fun to have something like "micq"
> but it's not necessary.

I am a 100% agree with your point. Because ppl from bell lab would rather
use e-mail rather than icq. Well, if you really want to use icq-clone, don't
be shy to write a program or port it to plan 9. It might have use for
somebody. But remember one point: Plan 9 is a system use to serve as a
distributed system, but a personal computing system. If you like the
functions provided by those fancy OSes, by all means change back to it. We
enjoy Plan 9 as it is simple, easy to use (is it really easy for beginners
:-) )

Alex

Re: [9fans] Re: Future of Plan9

[Andrew Zubinski]

> But remember one point: Plan 9 is a system use to serve as a
> distributed system, but a personal computing system. If you like the
> functions provided by those fancy OSes, by all means change back to it. We
> enjoy Plan 9 as it is simple, easy to use (is it really easy for beginners

What the nice style to help to beginners...

There was  my question/proposition about the cheap non-x86 hardware for Plan9
terminal (and portable POSIX implementation of cpu/file servers). Now I'm
finished the prototype PCB for such beast (133 MHz 64-bits IDT Embedded Orion,
128 MB of DRAM with some fancy features).  But I change my mind and decide to
implement microkernel based Oberon instead Plan9. Why ?

(It is my point of view and, please, don't blame me.)

If you are not a computer scientist - purist you'll need an OS with the highly
balanced design, firstly - with simple but feature rich API. Why? Cause you'll
never find enough time for learning all thouse bang'n'whistles things like
MFC/Motif/CDE/GTK/Gnome/Qt/KDE... . But some features are really needy like
graphics subsystem for data visualization (does anybody really like to read a
500 MB datafile with simulation results?) and with enough interactivity (o'k,
you can write script which will generate postscript from datafile, then render
ps and view it, but how to change one or more values in this "small" source
datafile?).

What I like in Plan9 design are "components as fileservers" conception and
Oberon-like Acme. But there are too many Unix garbage in system design at user
level - unstructured man pages set, obsolete formats, nothing-new shell,
nothing-new utilities set, C compiler only (and nowbody even don't think about
the possibility of porting something like Objective-C preprocessor and runtime
- sorry, I'm trying, but under the work pressure have no time).

As the result instead personal one-box Unix with TeX (or Lout), Octave,
Ghostscript, gv, and what-you-want-how-you-want else, you'll have an equal
personal 3-box Plan9 network with... oh, yes, TeX, Ghostscript,
something-like-gv and what-you-can-port-with-APE. And the real power of Plan9
are used for nothing - for the Unix emulation. Who really need this "feature"
when we have somewhere ugly but stable and very tunable well-documented Unix ?

This disbalance between clean and clever ideas on system level and wrong target
for common OS design (to build distributed Unix) IMHO is the greatest weakness
of Plan9. From the system programmer point of view Plan9 is the great OS, from
the application programmer point of view it is even more ugly than Unix. Maybe
I'm wrong but I can't see any native Plan9 programm oriented to any
non-computer application area where possibilities of Plan9 are usefull (like
distributed CAD/EDA, GIS). And system is not too young...

So, when I see such posts where somebody tolds us that "it is easy to use" or
"change back to other OS", I want to ask: "But how are you using it ? What are
you doing with it ? What is your application area ?".

[9fans] Re: Future of Plan9

[vecera]

In article <200012200058.AAA18825@whitecrow.demon.co.uk>,
  9fans@cse.psu.edu wrote:

> > BTW: Is anybody going to port tcl/tk lib to Plan9? Or anything else
> > which
> > will make easy to create menus and buttons and others in apps?
>
> This is my point: acme doesn't use menus or buttons, and it doesn't
> need tcl or tk to produce applications which use it as the user
> interface. But it does affect the style of interface you can have.
> acme doesn't have graphics, so you can't do a WYSIWYG text processor,
> but you could provide an interface to a TeX system with all sorts of
> nifty tools. So the question is not what you think you need, but what
> do you *really* need?

Acme without graphics can offer simply text menu and nothing else.
How will you solve case when you need choose between more choices
(radio buttons) or when you need ask for a value, string... or create
check box, list box?
Take some bigger app (f.e. Netscape) and thing out how could you make
his menu and control in acme...

I very like things simple and minimized but this should not _limit_ you.

vecera


Sent via Deja.com
http://www.deja.com/

Re: [9fans] Re: Future of Plan9

[Steve Kilbane]

vecera wrote:
> Acme without graphics can offer simply text menu and nothing else.

Actually, no: it doesn't offer menus. It offers text.

> How will you solve case when you need choose between more choices
> (radio buttons) or when you need ask for a value, string... or create
> check box, list box?

Like I said: people want the behaviour they're used to, and tend not
to think about the functionality they need. With acme, all the text
is "live", and merely clicking on can do something. Want more choices?
Type them into the window. Want to enter a value? Type it into the window.
See where we're going here?

> Take some bigger app (f.e. Netscape) and thing out how could you make
> his menu and control in acme...

No. Definitely not. Don't take any app. Take functionality: fetching
pages from a web server. Rendering HTML and other formats. Following
a URL. These are different actions, and there's been discussion here
about how they could be done in a way that makes good use of Plan 9.
Just bundling everything into a single program because that's what's
gone before isn't learning anything, and isn't advancing the state
of the art.

> I very like things simple and minimized but this should not _limit_ you.

Indeed not. It's one's imagination that limits one. Plan 9 is the only
OS I've seen where "failure of vision" is listed under the BUGS section
of the manual page.

steve

[9fans] Re: Future of Plan9

[Alexander C. Deztroyer]

I think people from Bell Labs wounldn't "port" tcl/tk lib set to Plan 9. At
least, I don't think they need such a thing.
<vecera@writeme.com> wrote in message news:91nt3g$t2f$1@nnrp1.deja.com...
> I like Plan9, I think it has good draft - networking, security,
> namespace (good idea!)...
> But now it needs applications.
>
> BTW: Is anybody going to port tcl/tk lib to Plan9? Or anything else
> which
> will make easy to create menus and buttons and others in apps?
>
> vecera
>
>
> Sent via Deja.com
> http://www.deja.com/

[9fans] Re: Future of Plan9

[Patrick R. Wade]

In article <91nt3g$t2f$1@nnrp1.deja.com>, vecera@writeme.com wrote:
>I like Plan9, I think it has good draft - networking, security,
>namespace (good idea!)...
>But now it needs applications.
>
>BTW: Is anybody going to port tcl/tk lib to Plan9? Or anything else
>which
>will make easy to create menus and buttons and others in apps?
>

There was a "panel" library, but i get the impression it went away with
the change from 8-1/2 to rio.  Perhaps it will re-surface.


-- 
	if(rp->p_flag&SSWAP) {
		rp->p_flag =& ~SSWAP;
		aretu(u.u_ssav);
	}

[9fans] Re: Future of Plan9

[Alexander C. Deztroyer]

Indeed, the multiprocessor support of Plan 9 is great. I think it is
somewhat better than Linux. Because it's part of the original design of Plan
9, what about Linux? they just add it on afterwards. Anyway, there's no
point to compare these two OSes. You won't compare a gum with a rubber.
right?

But I reckon Plan 9 is too programmer-oriented. If someone is willing to
rewrite/organize the manuals it might be easier for beginners to use.
However, is there anyone who really wanna work for that? :-)

Alex
Randolph Fritz <randolph@panix.com> wrote in message
news:slrn93tfgk.1as.randolph@panix3.panix.com...
> On Thu, 14 Dec 2000 09:49:14 GMT, Deztroyer-a1 <alex-sci@freenet.co.nz>
wrote:
> >One thing I can be sure is that plan 9 won't be as popular as linux. It
is
> >because the design on plan9; It is a distributed computing environment
> >rather than a client/server one. Be sure to check out the official web
site
> >of plan 9, you might found some more interesting stuff on there.
> >
> >Future of plan 9? In my opinion, with a little modification on Plan 9,
it'll
> >be great. However, plan 9 is just the same as concorde; not a very
succesful
> >commerical product I think. However, I enjoy using plan 9 myself. It's a
> >little bit too "scientific" if it is to server as a commerical product.
> >
>
> I think that Plan 9 is an ideal platform for ubiquitous computing; I
> could easily imagine a Plan 9 server as the core of a household
> network.  Inferno, based on similar technology, is working in telephone
> switches right now.
>
> It's also excellent for large, loosely-coupled multi-processor
> networks; when those are implemented using Linux, they invariably
> drown in excess (and costly) hardware.  One of these days (but
> probably not soon, sigh) I want to make serious use of it in lighting
> modelling.
>
> Randolph

[9fans] Future of Plan9

[Jaytee]

Hello everybody!

I'm very green about Plan9.
I justo found it in the net and i'm curious about it's future.
Do you think that is good idea to learn using and programming Plan9?
Is there any future for this system?  If yes then in what industry?
In what kind of machines Plan 9 is used?  In Palmtops?  or maybe
specialized web servers?  maybe in any other industry?
Excuse me my questions, i know they may be silly, i just want to hear
some opinions from people who use Plan 9 in their work places or homes.



Greetings!

Jacek Szydlowski
jaytee@janowo.net