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I've been a Plan9 user/dev since 2000. Have been to two of the IWP9 conferences - sadly I won't be going to Seattle for the 5th unless I score some big cash in
by konad 16y ago
I've been a Plan9 user/dev since 2000. Have been to two of the IWP9 conferences - sadly I won't be going to Seattle for the 5th unless I score some big cash in the next few weeks - http://iwp9.quanstro.net/ http://iwp9.quanstro.net/
* Licensing - Plan9 wasn't open when open was the in thing.
* No web browser - just as the web became a big thing, no web browser is a deathtrap.
* The gap is too great a leap - until the recent LinuxEMU almost NONE of your fave apps were available - unless you really like cmd line tools (I do :)
* Hard to justify in your organisation - when you're one of only 50 people in the world that know how to use an OS, making it part of your infrastructure is a huge risk.
That said, to suggest it is a failure is erroneous. We have at least one successful company using Plan9 in their hardware - Coraid. They have the commitment, income and a few of those 50 people to make it work for them. IBM also use it on Blue Gene and other super computers, as do Sandia National Labs, LANL and others around the world. It was also used at the Sydney Olympics to control the stadium lighting and Lucent use it in their cell phone masts in Real Time mode.
Come and chat to people in irc://irc.freenode.org/#plan9
Oh - there's also a fantastic port of many of the tools into Linux / BSD. http://swtch.com/plan9port http://swtch.com/plan9port
I use them every day - Venti is particularly useful
- jff 16y agoHey! I'll be at IWP9 5e this year if things go well. Fun to see another Plan 9 user on here. I'm an intern with Sandia Labs, working on my master's degree at the moment, so I've got this work I've been cooking up all ready for a Work In Progress report at IWP9. To expand a bit, I think Plan 9 has potential in the world of scientific computing. There are a few things scientists expect on their supercomputers, and Plan 9 either has them or can have them without unreasonable effort. They include: MPI, Python (already available), Linux compatibility layer (exists), and FORTRAN 77 (this can happen if we reaallllly need it). Check out the HARE project, where Plan 9 was ported to the Blue Gene systems as part of the ongoing Fast-OS project, which aims to find a better OS for supercomputing. (Basically, Linux is too huge, whereas custom kernels are just too stripped down and customized. Plan 9 is small but general)
- konad 16y agoRon's talks last year were fascinating. It's great to hear the truth behind the veil of the HPC world. That they run Linux but then use OSBypass becase the Linux kernel is too slow was a revelation, they don't shout that part too loud when gushing about Linux. The curried syscall system was enlightening.
- jff 16y agoThank you, that was kinda my baby--Ron had the actual idea of course, but I did the implementation. It was really great how easy it was to do.
- jawee 16y agoWhat are you able to use Plan9 for on a daily basis, out of curiosity?
- konad 16y agoMy normal work - programming. Linux / BSD have a 9p servers so one can mount them in Plan 9. The environment is so much nicer both in looks and operation.