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A decade (or so) ago, you could have said the same thing while leaving out "Linux" (some would argue it's still valid to leave out Linux in that claim). Things

A decade (or so) ago, you could have said the same thing while leaving out "Linux" (some would argue it's still valid to leave out Linux in that claim). Things have a way of changing, and even I, as a big fan of Linux, can see its limitations and hope that, at the very least, Linux will integrate some of the better ideas from other OSes (Plan9 especially has some awesome ideas). Or, you know, Plan9 sticks to its guns and gains traction. I might even go as far as saying the world could do worse than to replace OSX and Windows with the likes of Plan9 and Inferno.

mercurial 13y ago
While I think the overall concept is amazing, my understanding is that the user interface stayed somewhere in the mid-nineties, and that it lacks things people tend to expect in a modern UNIX-like operating system, such as a decent browser, vim, shell history and symlinks. On the other hand, it has in some ways infected Linux (virtual filesystems), though sadly in a fairly limited fashion (think of copy-paste on steroids, built-in authentication agent). The way it is designed around a single, simple but powerful metaphor (everything is a file) is really brilliant.
- seryoiupfurds 13y ago
  > decent browser This, along with hardware support, is why I don't run Plan 9 as my only OS. Porting a modern browser to Plan 9 would be incredibly painful, and I believe the codebase of Chromium or Firefox is larger than Plan 9 itself these days! > vim Someone actually ported vim, and it's pretty easy to install from contrib. > symlinks These are a deliberate omission; the ability to rearrange the filesystem with bind doesn't correspond exactly to symlinks since it's done as a property of the current namespace rather than stored in the filesystem, but with the idioms that are built around bind, I've never missed symlinks at all. Sorry for going into defensive-weenie mode and attacking your positive post!
  - mercurial 13y ago
    > Sorry for going into defensive-weenie mode and attacking your positive post! No worries. One of the reasons for my post is to learn more about what's available on current Plan 9. Besides, I don't mind having my misconceptions corrected, as long as it's done politely. Thanks for taking time to do that.
- 4ad 13y ago
  > vim Plan 9 has acme and sam. There's also a vim port, but give Rob Pike's editors a chance. The relation between Unix and Plan 9 is the same as the relation between vim and sam. > shell history There's terminal (not shell) history, check out the " and "" scripts. Again, things are different in Plan 9. There's no point in doing the same stuff again. The Plan 9 mechanism is an emergent property of its design (it doesn't require special code in shells), and it's scriptable (again, see " and ""). > symlinks This makes no sense, Plan 9 have private namespaces which can do many things, including everything symlinks do. > decent browser The browser is probably the biggest gripe for more people. You can run a semi-recent Opera in linuxemu. I believe it wouldn't be too hard to update linuxemu so you could run a recent firefox or chromium, however nobody did the work so far. Personally, when I use Plan 9, I use it to do things I can't do in Unix, so I don't spend any effort that would enable me to do things I do in Unix. For browsing I use a mac.
  - mercurial 13y ago
    > Plan 9 has acme and sam. There's also a vim port, but give Rob Pike's editors a chance. The relation between Unix and Plan 9 is the same as the relation between vim and sam. From what I can read on wikipedia, both acme and sam are mouse-centered. This is a major philosophical change compared to vim, while my understanding is that Plan 9 is a pure expression of the ideas underlying Unix ("Unix without the hacks"). > There's terminal (not shell) history, check out the " and "" scripts. Again, things are different in Plan 9. There's no point in doing the same stuff again. The Plan 9 mechanism is an emergent property of its design (it doesn't require special code in shells), and it's scriptable (again, see " and ""). I'm afraid " and "" have both defeated my google-fu. Would you mind enlightening me about them? > This makes no sense, Plan 9 have private namespaces which can do many things, including everything symlinks do. I see. From what I read, that's certainly a much more powerful and cleaner abstraction than symlinks. > The browser is probably the biggest gripe for more people. You can run a semi-recent Opera in linuxemu. I believe it wouldn't be too hard to update linuxemu so you could run a recent firefox or chromium, however nobody did the work so far. Personally, when I use Plan 9, I use it to do things I can't do in Unix, so I don't spend any effort that would enable me to do things I do in Unix. For browsing I use a mac. This sounds reasonable. Anyway, given the limited hardware support, I suppose a VM is the way to go.
- SixSigma 13y ago
  > shell history cat /dev/text if you want to keep it run tail -f /dev/text >> /home/shell_history in your login The shell doesn't have fancy nonsense because fancy nonsense doesn't belong in the shell it belongs in your user environment. Personally in 15 years of using plan9 I have never ever once wished for shell history.
  - mercurial 13y ago
    Uh. The fact that the shell serializes its history wherever is an implementation detail. If there is no way to: bring up the last commands used, sequentially, with a simple shortcut like "arrow up", and search for a given command like (like ctrl-r), that's a regression in usability compared to something like bash.
    - SixSigma 13y ago
      But we consider Bash an abomination. All the developers have been entirely free to build a new shell and that no-one has in 20 years of development by the cream of the Unix team and use by some excellent coders shows us that this is the way we want to work. We have no need for command history. Mostly because we use better tools such as Sam and Acme to run arbitrary shell commands. I shall repeat, like I end up doing on most plan9 threads, I have never had the need for command history in 15 years of using plan9. Ten years of that was full time software development and system administration in plan9. Not using an OS because it doesn't have a shell like Bash is short sighted. These kind of arguments are why most of us don't even turn up to threads about plan9. It's the same 3 things over and over. No command history, doesn't have Linux programs, doesn't have a native HTML4 compliant web browser
      - mercurial 13y ago
        > We have no need for command history. Mostly because we use better tools such as Sam and Acme to run arbitrary shell commands. Just now, I was repeatedly running curl in order to test an API, occasionally tweaking URL parameters here and there. Would you really open a text editor, type your curl line inside, and execute the result? I'm not trying to be antagonistic, but I just have a hard time fathoming the idea of a shell without history.

mercurial 13y ago

While I think the overall concept is amazing, my understanding is that the user interface stayed somewhere in the mid-nineties, and that it lacks things people tend to expect in a modern UNIX-like operating system, such as a decent browser, vim, shell history and symlinks. On the other hand, it has in some ways infected Linux (virtual filesystems), though sadly in a fairly limited fashion (think of copy-paste on steroids, built-in authentication agent). The way it is designed around a single, simple but powerful metaphor (everything is a file) is really brilliant.

seryoiupfurds 13y ago
> decent browser This, along with hardware support, is why I don't run Plan 9 as my only OS. Porting a modern browser to Plan 9 would be incredibly painful, and I believe the codebase of Chromium or Firefox is larger than Plan 9 itself these days! > vim Someone actually ported vim, and it's pretty easy to install from contrib. > symlinks These are a deliberate omission; the ability to rearrange the filesystem with bind doesn't correspond exactly to symlinks since it's done as a property of the current namespace rather than stored in the filesystem, but with the idioms that are built around bind, I've never missed symlinks at all. Sorry for going into defensive-weenie mode and attacking your positive post!
- mercurial 13y ago
  > Sorry for going into defensive-weenie mode and attacking your positive post! No worries. One of the reasons for my post is to learn more about what's available on current Plan 9. Besides, I don't mind having my misconceptions corrected, as long as it's done politely. Thanks for taking time to do that.
4ad 13y ago
> vim Plan 9 has acme and sam. There's also a vim port, but give Rob Pike's editors a chance. The relation between Unix and Plan 9 is the same as the relation between vim and sam. > shell history There's terminal (not shell) history, check out the " and "" scripts. Again, things are different in Plan 9. There's no point in doing the same stuff again. The Plan 9 mechanism is an emergent property of its design (it doesn't require special code in shells), and it's scriptable (again, see " and ""). > symlinks This makes no sense, Plan 9 have private namespaces which can do many things, including everything symlinks do. > decent browser The browser is probably the biggest gripe for more people. You can run a semi-recent Opera in linuxemu. I believe it wouldn't be too hard to update linuxemu so you could run a recent firefox or chromium, however nobody did the work so far. Personally, when I use Plan 9, I use it to do things I can't do in Unix, so I don't spend any effort that would enable me to do things I do in Unix. For browsing I use a mac.
- mercurial 13y ago
  > Plan 9 has acme and sam. There's also a vim port, but give Rob Pike's editors a chance. The relation between Unix and Plan 9 is the same as the relation between vim and sam. From what I can read on wikipedia, both acme and sam are mouse-centered. This is a major philosophical change compared to vim, while my understanding is that Plan 9 is a pure expression of the ideas underlying Unix ("Unix without the hacks"). > There's terminal (not shell) history, check out the " and "" scripts. Again, things are different in Plan 9. There's no point in doing the same stuff again. The Plan 9 mechanism is an emergent property of its design (it doesn't require special code in shells), and it's scriptable (again, see " and ""). I'm afraid " and "" have both defeated my google-fu. Would you mind enlightening me about them? > This makes no sense, Plan 9 have private namespaces which can do many things, including everything symlinks do. I see. From what I read, that's certainly a much more powerful and cleaner abstraction than symlinks. > The browser is probably the biggest gripe for more people. You can run a semi-recent Opera in linuxemu. I believe it wouldn't be too hard to update linuxemu so you could run a recent firefox or chromium, however nobody did the work so far. Personally, when I use Plan 9, I use it to do things I can't do in Unix, so I don't spend any effort that would enable me to do things I do in Unix. For browsing I use a mac. This sounds reasonable. Anyway, given the limited hardware support, I suppose a VM is the way to go.
SixSigma 13y ago
> shell history cat /dev/text if you want to keep it run tail -f /dev/text >> /home/shell_history in your login The shell doesn't have fancy nonsense because fancy nonsense doesn't belong in the shell it belongs in your user environment. Personally in 15 years of using plan9 I have never ever once wished for shell history.
- mercurial 13y ago
  Uh. The fact that the shell serializes its history wherever is an implementation detail. If there is no way to: bring up the last commands used, sequentially, with a simple shortcut like "arrow up", and search for a given command like (like ctrl-r), that's a regression in usability compared to something like bash.
  - SixSigma 13y ago
    But we consider Bash an abomination. All the developers have been entirely free to build a new shell and that no-one has in 20 years of development by the cream of the Unix team and use by some excellent coders shows us that this is the way we want to work. We have no need for command history. Mostly because we use better tools such as Sam and Acme to run arbitrary shell commands. I shall repeat, like I end up doing on most plan9 threads, I have never had the need for command history in 15 years of using plan9. Ten years of that was full time software development and system administration in plan9. Not using an OS because it doesn't have a shell like Bash is short sighted. These kind of arguments are why most of us don't even turn up to threads about plan9. It's the same 3 things over and over. No command history, doesn't have Linux programs, doesn't have a native HTML4 compliant web browser
    - mercurial 13y ago
      > We have no need for command history. Mostly because we use better tools such as Sam and Acme to run arbitrary shell commands. Just now, I was repeatedly running curl in order to test an API, occasionally tweaking URL parameters here and there. Would you really open a text editor, type your curl line inside, and execute the result? I'm not trying to be antagonistic, but I just have a hard time fathoming the idea of a shell without history.