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Ghosts of Unix Past
- thristian 16y agoA lot has been said about how Plan9 is "Unix with all the design issues fixed", but as much as I like the idea of "everything is really, really a file", I'm not sure whether I could get used to the Xerox Star style GUI (which you can't easily replace, since it too is exposed to the filesystem), or trade my lovely Vim in for Acme.
- brucebanned 16y agoYou''re free to run it as a plan9 network and mount p9 files in Linux, it's part of the Linux kernel. There is also http://swtch.com/plan9port http://swtch.com/plan9port Plan9 in Userspace and http://swtch.com/9vx/ http://swtch.com/9vx/ which runs the Plan9 kernel in a VM though dev is currently on an other branch http://9fans.net/archive/2010/10/14 http://9fans.net/archive/2010/10/14
- brucebanned 16y agoAnd as any actual Plan9 user will tell you while it isn't "Unix with all the design issues fixed", the model of a per process namespace and synthetic files all over the place makes for a very practical and problem solving system. Many feel the GUI is a joy but you're not forced to use it, there is even a text mode install. (though only use it if you have to :)
- anon_d 16y agoGUI (which you can't easily replace, since it too is exposed to the filesystem) What? The graphics system is quite nice, there's no reason to replace that. I'm pretty sure there is nothing tying the graphics protocol to their GUI paradigm. I think it would be entirely possible to implement, say, GTK over it. Vim There's no reason it couldn't be ported. I would use it if you made it. It would be nice to have a libdraw based vi, even just in plan9port.
- aw3c2 16y agoActual link: http://lwn.net/Articles/411845/ http://lwn.net/Articles/411845/ There are several parts, links are on the bottom of each chapter.
- jfb 16y agoI thought this was excellent. I highly encourage everyone to read all five parts; the bits about signals were particularly enlightening to me.