5 ms·

Plan9 has been forked: 9front

150 points by zmmz 15y ago

cdcarter 15y ago
This is the first big step to actually creating an ecosystem for plan9. It's a fantastic OS, though there's not much I can do with it, unfortunately. Maybe that will change now!
mycroftiv 15y ago
I see several good things on the list of new features. The rc-based boot process is definitely a good idea. I haven't had the issues with the fossil filesystem that some have, so I don't know about cwfs as the main on-disk fileserver, but I'm looking forward to trying it out. A lot of the contributors have been doing good things in the Plan 9 world for quite awhile now. A list of some of the new features is at http://code.google.com/p/plan9front/wiki/features http://code.google.com/p/plan9front/wiki/features
- xiaoqmabd 15y ago
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EthanG 15y ago
Oh no, they're taking us seriously! Quick, add more swastikas! Heh, seriously, 9front development is done more in fun than anything else, but the 3 main developers are sufficiently talented that rapid progress is being made in several areas where most 9fans tend to struggle. Not only that but 9front's developers seem to be very good at avoiding getting bogged down in peripheral features which divert effort from the drivers and cleanups which Plan 9 really needs.
- rkalla 15y ago
  Ethan, the fun vibe of the project really shows through. I think it is inspiring and inviting. Glad to see you guys having fun with some really cool tech. Keep pushing it forward and keeping us posted! The native Go integration was a really good move; a lot of interested cross-overs I am sure from the Go community will get into 9front because of that attractive piece.
muuh-gnu 15y ago
Does the fork still have the same de facto non-free license that plagued Plan9?
- dchest 15y ago
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plan_9_from_Bell_Labs#License http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plan_9_from_Bell_Labs#License
- nknight 15y ago
  You mean the FSF-vetted and DFSG-compatible license Plan9 has been under since 2002? It's not GPL-compatible, but it's definitely Free. http://plan9.bell-labs.com/plan9/license.html http://plan9.bell-labs.com/plan9/license.html http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#lucent102 http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#lucent102
- piotrSikora 15y ago
  What do you mean by non-free?
richardk 15y ago
https://code.google.com/p/plan9front/wiki/Mascot https://code.google.com/p/plan9front/wiki/Mascot lol
- rkalla 15y ago
  haha, I love the vibe of the project. Seems like a fun team. I do miss Glenda though. Getting someone to color her in would have been a good mascot.
- fungi 15y ago
  thanks... my immediate thought was... what about the bunny?
pama 15y ago
Here is funny artwork for 9front: http://plan9.stanleylieber.com/9front/ http://plan9.stanleylieber.com/9front/
mask_of_zorro 15y ago
Oh boy! So now instead of one going nowhere OS, there are two going nowhere OSes, only with one going nowhere slightly faster.
- rkalla 15y ago
  It takes no effort to be a wet blanket; all you have to do is lie there, covered in water, and drown out anyone else trying to do anything. How many emails/comments/posts EXACTLY like what you just wrote happened in 1991? No one is saying what Plan9 will or won't become, but that also means you have no idea where it is going in 10 years or what fun innovations will come out of it. Don't make a habit of shitting on people thinking outside the box, you'll miss a lot of interesting things.
- p9idf 15y ago
  If you can't see the point of operating systems research, how else would you like to see the state of the art advanced?
- 1337p337 15y ago
  Even if Plan 9 and 9front go nowhere, the ideas have already crept into other operating systems and userland tools. Linux has had 'mount --bind' for a while, and has last year introduced in-kernel support for 9P2000 (for mounting Plan 9 resources). bash and gawk have some weak support for interacting with the network via the filesystem. wmii actually speaks 9P2000 and uses it for scripting.
- hollerith 15y ago
  Plan 9 was the first system to use UTF-8 and a /proc filesystem such as the one used in Linux.
crazy2k 15y ago
Why the fork?
- crazy2k 15y ago
  Someone told me on IRC that Plan9's maintaners can't keep up with the work and they don't accept much help.
thristian 15y ago
After having some experience trying to write portable Bourne Shell scripts, I recently came across Tom Duff's paper[1] describing the "rc" shell used by Plan 9. I was quite blown away by the number of common shell-scripting problems it solves, and the elegance of the resulting language. There's no chance of it replacing, say, Python, but I'm sorely tempted to install Plan 9 From User Space and try out rc the next time I need to script something. [1]: http://doc.cat-v.org/plan_9/4th_edition/papers/rc http://doc.cat-v.org/plan_9/4th_edition/papers/rc
- p9idf 15y ago
  Erik Quanstrom has a version which fixes some of Rc's faults, like having no return statement and the weird ifs behaviour.
  - uriel 15y ago
    The lack of return statements is rarely missed, although it could be handy in some cases, there are ways around it. There is nothing weird about ifs' behavior once you understand it. Byron's rc tried to 'fix' ifs, and made everything worse.
- uriel 15y ago
  rc is a truly beautiful thing. I wrote a pretty complex web framework and CMS with it ( http://werc.cat-v.org http://werc.cat-v.org ), and the more I used it, the more I loved it. I found it to be extremely well crafted, with every feature fitting beautifully with the rest, it misses many fancy things people expect, but once you know your way around what it has, you can do almost anything. Like awk, is one of those few languages that you can fully keep in your head, and that plus the power of calling other Unix/Plan 9 commands makes it very effective.
  - rednaught 15y ago
    Thanks for creating that framework. I had seen it in use a few times but it didn't dawn on me until reading your comments above the relation to Plan 9.
RexRollman 15y ago
Personally, when considering the number of ex-Bell Labs employees there, I had hopes that Google would pick up the rights to Plan 9 and continue it. Plus, Google has the deep pockets needed to ensure proper device driver support for modern hardware.
- jbrennan 15y ago
  I'm wondering, though, what use would Google make of P9? I guess it might make a great fit with Go.
  - katovatzschyn 15y ago
    Maybe it's not reasonable now or ever but I'd quite love to think of Google as a company capable of doing things that are immensely interesting but have no obvious, immediate, practical "use." I don't know if they are there quite yet. It seems to me that they still strongly incentivize shipping products and making things people will use within in their corporate culture. I might be wrong. There could be a light coming on.
1337p337 15y ago
The IRC channel (#cat-v on freenode) has been extra helpful and responsive. I've now got 9front mostly up and running on qemu and my T60, thanks to devs fixing drivers on the fly while I passed along screenshots of error messages. I've been interested in hacking on Plan 9 for a while but have had little luck getting it to boot before 9front (even 9atom). A couple of years down the road, it would be delightfully perverse to end up with Plan 9 running in the server room and Linux/OSX on the devs' desktops. Maybe unlikely, but fun to consider.
cpeterso 15y ago
What is the significance of the name "9front"?
- thristian 15y ago
  The linked web-page spells out the full name as "Plan 9 from the People's Front of cat-v.org" - perhaps a reference to the "Judean People's Front/People's Front of Judea" split described in Monty Python's Life of Brian.

150 points by zmmz 15y ago

This is the first big step to actually creating an ecosystem for plan9. It's a fantastic OS, though there's not much I can do with it, unfortunately. Maybe that will change now!

mycroftiv 15y ago

I see several good things on the list of new features. The rc-based boot process is definitely a good idea. I haven't had the issues with the fossil filesystem that some have, so I don't know about cwfs as the main on-disk fileserver, but I'm looking forward to trying it out. A lot of the contributors have been doing good things in the Plan 9 world for quite awhile now. A list of some of the new features is at http://code.google.com/p/plan9front/wiki/features http://code.google.com/p/plan9front/wiki/features

xiaoqmabd 15y ago
welcometo: http://www.fullmalls.com http://www.fullmalls.com The website wholesale for many kinds of fashion shoes, like the nike,jordan,prada,, also including the jeans,shirts,bags,hat and the decorations. All the products are free shipping, and the the price is competitive, and also can accept the paypal payment.,after the payment, can ship within short time. free shippingcompetitive priceany size availableaccept the paypal ===== http://www.fullmalls.com http://www.fullmalls.com ===== jordan shoes $32nike shox $32Christan Audigier bikini $23 Ed Hardy Bikini $23Smful short_t-shirt_woman $15ed hardy short_tank_woman $16Sandal $32christian loubo utin $80 Sunglass $15 COACH_Necklace $27handbag $33AF tank woman $17puma slipper woman $30 ===== http://www.fullmalls.com http://www.fullmalls.com ===== ===== http://www.fullmalls.com http://www.fullmalls.com ===== ===== http://www.fullmalls.com http://www.fullmalls.com ===== ===== http://www.fullmalls.com http://www.fullmalls.com ===== ===== http://www.fullmalls.com http://www.fullmalls.com ===== ===== http://www.fullmalls.com http://www.fullmalls.com ===== ===== http://www.fullmalls.com http://www.fullmalls.com =====

EthanG 15y ago

Oh no, they're taking us seriously! Quick, add more swastikas! Heh, seriously, 9front development is done more in fun than anything else, but the 3 main developers are sufficiently talented that rapid progress is being made in several areas where most 9fans tend to struggle. Not only that but 9front's developers seem to be very good at avoiding getting bogged down in peripheral features which divert effort from the drivers and cleanups which Plan 9 really needs.

rkalla 15y ago
Ethan, the fun vibe of the project really shows through. I think it is inspiring and inviting. Glad to see you guys having fun with some really cool tech. Keep pushing it forward and keeping us posted! The native Go integration was a really good move; a lot of interested cross-overs I am sure from the Go community will get into 9front because of that attractive piece.

muuh-gnu 15y ago

Does the fork still have the same de facto non-free license that plagued Plan9?

dchest 15y ago
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plan_9_from_Bell_Labs#License http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plan_9_from_Bell_Labs#License
nknight 15y ago
You mean the FSF-vetted and DFSG-compatible license Plan9 has been under since 2002? It's not GPL-compatible, but it's definitely Free. http://plan9.bell-labs.com/plan9/license.html http://plan9.bell-labs.com/plan9/license.html http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#lucent102 http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#lucent102
piotrSikora 15y ago
What do you mean by non-free?

richardk 15y ago

https://code.google.com/p/plan9front/wiki/Mascot https://code.google.com/p/plan9front/wiki/Mascot lol

rkalla 15y ago
haha, I love the vibe of the project. Seems like a fun team. I do miss Glenda though. Getting someone to color her in would have been a good mascot.
fungi 15y ago
thanks... my immediate thought was... what about the bunny?

pama 15y ago

Here is funny artwork for 9front: http://plan9.stanleylieber.com/9front/ http://plan9.stanleylieber.com/9front/

mask_of_zorro 15y ago

Oh boy! So now instead of one going nowhere OS, there are two going nowhere OSes, only with one going nowhere slightly faster.

rkalla 15y ago
It takes no effort to be a wet blanket; all you have to do is lie there, covered in water, and drown out anyone else trying to do anything. How many emails/comments/posts EXACTLY like what you just wrote happened in 1991? No one is saying what Plan9 will or won't become, but that also means you have no idea where it is going in 10 years or what fun innovations will come out of it. Don't make a habit of shitting on people thinking outside the box, you'll miss a lot of interesting things.
p9idf 15y ago
If you can't see the point of operating systems research, how else would you like to see the state of the art advanced?
1337p337 15y ago
Even if Plan 9 and 9front go nowhere, the ideas have already crept into other operating systems and userland tools. Linux has had 'mount --bind' for a while, and has last year introduced in-kernel support for 9P2000 (for mounting Plan 9 resources). bash and gawk have some weak support for interacting with the network via the filesystem. wmii actually speaks 9P2000 and uses it for scripting.
hollerith 15y ago
Plan 9 was the first system to use UTF-8 and a /proc filesystem such as the one used in Linux.

crazy2k 15y ago

Why the fork?

crazy2k 15y ago
Someone told me on IRC that Plan9's maintaners can't keep up with the work and they don't accept much help.

thristian 15y ago

After having some experience trying to write portable Bourne Shell scripts, I recently came across Tom Duff's paper[1] describing the "rc" shell used by Plan 9. I was quite blown away by the number of common shell-scripting problems it solves, and the elegance of the resulting language. There's no chance of it replacing, say, Python, but I'm sorely tempted to install Plan 9 From User Space and try out rc the next time I need to script something. [1]: http://doc.cat-v.org/plan_9/4th_edition/papers/rc http://doc.cat-v.org/plan_9/4th_edition/papers/rc

p9idf 15y ago
Erik Quanstrom has a version which fixes some of Rc's faults, like having no return statement and the weird ifs behaviour.
- uriel 15y ago
  The lack of return statements is rarely missed, although it could be handy in some cases, there are ways around it. There is nothing weird about ifs' behavior once you understand it. Byron's rc tried to 'fix' ifs, and made everything worse.
uriel 15y ago
rc is a truly beautiful thing. I wrote a pretty complex web framework and CMS with it ( http://werc.cat-v.org http://werc.cat-v.org ), and the more I used it, the more I loved it. I found it to be extremely well crafted, with every feature fitting beautifully with the rest, it misses many fancy things people expect, but once you know your way around what it has, you can do almost anything. Like awk, is one of those few languages that you can fully keep in your head, and that plus the power of calling other Unix/Plan 9 commands makes it very effective.
- rednaught 15y ago
  Thanks for creating that framework. I had seen it in use a few times but it didn't dawn on me until reading your comments above the relation to Plan 9.

RexRollman 15y ago

Personally, when considering the number of ex-Bell Labs employees there, I had hopes that Google would pick up the rights to Plan 9 and continue it. Plus, Google has the deep pockets needed to ensure proper device driver support for modern hardware.

jbrennan 15y ago
I'm wondering, though, what use would Google make of P9? I guess it might make a great fit with Go.
- katovatzschyn 15y ago
  Maybe it's not reasonable now or ever but I'd quite love to think of Google as a company capable of doing things that are immensely interesting but have no obvious, immediate, practical "use." I don't know if they are there quite yet. It seems to me that they still strongly incentivize shipping products and making things people will use within in their corporate culture. I might be wrong. There could be a light coming on.

1337p337 15y ago

The IRC channel (#cat-v on freenode) has been extra helpful and responsive. I've now got 9front mostly up and running on qemu and my T60, thanks to devs fixing drivers on the fly while I passed along screenshots of error messages. I've been interested in hacking on Plan 9 for a while but have had little luck getting it to boot before 9front (even 9atom). A couple of years down the road, it would be delightfully perverse to end up with Plan 9 running in the server room and Linux/OSX on the devs' desktops. Maybe unlikely, but fun to consider.

cpeterso 15y ago

What is the significance of the name "9front"?

thristian 15y ago
The linked web-page spells out the full name as "Plan 9 from the People's Front of cat-v.org" - perhaps a reference to the "Judean People's Front/People's Front of Judea" split described in Monty Python's Life of Brian.