10 ms·

Has anyone used Plan-9 have feedback on running it?

by kayman 12y ago

rcarmo 12y ago
You can check my other comments for more, but a couple of old-time UNIX folk I know described it as being dropped into a bare X11 environment with twm, a flint knife, and the Acme editor. Acme is amazing, but the whole thing uses mouse chording and requires a 3-button mouse, so it requires a lot of getting used to if you're newer to computers than, say, 1990. In general, Plan9 delivers on being "a better UNIX" in terms of what a standalone process perceives as its runtime environment - everything of consequence is a file, regardless of its location, and mounting remote devices of all kinds is wonderfully consistent. Sadly, all the "nice" things you take for granted on Linux (like hardware support, graphics compositing, audio, wi-fi, graphical web browsers, even SSH and modern language runtimes) are absent or have to be bolted on with fairly ugly hacks. Still, it runs OK on a Raspberry Pi. Wish it did so on a ODROID-U3, though.
- mischief6 12y ago
  ron puts it in perspective pretty well: http://9fans.net/archive/2011/04/230 http://9fans.net/archive/2011/04/230
  - rcarmo 12y ago
    Yeah, but that makes sense at the OS level. UX-wise (and generally speaking, for most common uses of a computer these days), Plan9 is, sadly, almost useless. I myself only use it because I _like_ messing about with different (and arguably better) operating systems, but it's very, very, VERY hard to do so for general "work" or even browsing the web.
    - Sir_Cmpwn 12y ago
      I've considered spending time on plan 9 making the UX less crappy. I think the stuff under the covers is fantastic but the UX is not great. The three button mouse thing is pretty stupid, for one.
      - rcarmo 12y ago
        Thank goodness I'm not alone! Where have you been all this time? :)
        Sir_Cmpwn 12y ago
        I'm just a frequent user of tiling window managers and vim on Linux and I wish I had the elegance of plan9 under the covers :) Unfortunately I'm all talk at this point. I have to set up an actual plan9 machine at some point and start working on it if I were to get anywhere.
        soong 12y ago
        Since the window system exposes all windows including their attributes(position,size, etc) via the file system, at least some of the tiling WM functionality could easily be implemented with rc scripts. Being a dwm user myself I planned to do so, but after using rio for some time I found this completely unnecessary since you can place your windows very conveniently with the mouse in the first place.
      - vezzy-fnord 12y ago
        The three button mouse thing is pretty stupid, for one. "All those parentheses in Lisp are pretty stupid, for one." Considering that the Plan 9 UI fundamentally revolves around mouse chording, I wish you luck with that. It's a shame that Unix users are stuck in the keyboard-only mentality that they write off the mouse as some tool for lowly end users.
        rcarmo 12y ago
        Please don't. As a Pythonista turned LISPer, I've heard all that stuff before. What is pretty stupid is being unable to use Plan9 on a modern laptop with a trackpad -- again, check my comments on previous Plan9 posts.
        mischief6 12y ago
- nsajko 12y ago
  Relevant SSH bashing: http://harmful.cat-v.org/software/ssh http://harmful.cat-v.org/software/ssh :)
  - edwintorok 12y ago
    So what is Plan9's alternative to SSH? SSL seems even worse than SSH in terms of algorithms that you have to negotiate, and thanks to misconfigurations you can end up in a situation with no shared ciphers (if server accepts only RC4 and client rejects RC4 for example). Maybe tinyssh could qualify as an alternative...
    - 1ris 12y ago
      There is cpu for plan9. It's a remoteshell does does mount the local filesystem, so you can continue to work. I don't think tinyssh is less complex, as it is compatible.
      - edwintorok 12y ago
        According to that mailing list message cpu uses 9P+ssl, and I consider ssl more complex than ssh. May not be the case on Plan9 as it looks like their ssl only supports old algorithms and not too many of them.
- pjmlp 12y ago
  > Acme is amazing, but the whole thing uses mouse chording and requires a 3-button mouse, so it requires a lot of getting used to if you're newer to computers than, say, 1990. That is based on how Oberon UI works, which then again is based on Mesa/Cedar at Xerox PARC.

Has anyone used Plan-9 have feedback on running it?

by kayman 12y ago

Has anyone used Plan-9 have feedback on running it?

You can check my other comments for more, but a couple of old-time UNIX folk I know described it as being dropped into a bare X11 environment with twm, a flint knife, and the Acme editor. Acme is amazing, but the whole thing uses mouse chording and requires a 3-button mouse, so it requires a lot of getting used to if you're newer to computers than, say, 1990. In general, Plan9 delivers on being "a better UNIX" in terms of what a standalone process perceives as its runtime environment - everything of consequence is a file, regardless of its location, and mounting remote devices of all kinds is wonderfully consistent. Sadly, all the "nice" things you take for granted on Linux (like hardware support, graphics compositing, audio, wi-fi, graphical web browsers, even SSH and modern language runtimes) are absent or have to be bolted on with fairly ugly hacks. Still, it runs OK on a Raspberry Pi. Wish it did so on a ODROID-U3, though.

mischief6 12y ago
ron puts it in perspective pretty well: http://9fans.net/archive/2011/04/230 http://9fans.net/archive/2011/04/230
- rcarmo 12y ago
  Yeah, but that makes sense at the OS level. UX-wise (and generally speaking, for most common uses of a computer these days), Plan9 is, sadly, almost useless. I myself only use it because I _like_ messing about with different (and arguably better) operating systems, but it's very, very, VERY hard to do so for general "work" or even browsing the web.
  - Sir_Cmpwn 12y ago
    I've considered spending time on plan 9 making the UX less crappy. I think the stuff under the covers is fantastic but the UX is not great. The three button mouse thing is pretty stupid, for one.
    - rcarmo 12y ago
      Thank goodness I'm not alone! Where have you been all this time? :)
      - Sir_Cmpwn 12y ago
        I'm just a frequent user of tiling window managers and vim on Linux and I wish I had the elegance of plan9 under the covers :) Unfortunately I'm all talk at this point. I have to set up an actual plan9 machine at some point and start working on it if I were to get anywhere.
        soong 12y ago
        Since the window system exposes all windows including their attributes(position,size, etc) via the file system, at least some of the tiling WM functionality could easily be implemented with rc scripts. Being a dwm user myself I planned to do so, but after using rio for some time I found this completely unnecessary since you can place your windows very conveniently with the mouse in the first place.
    - vezzy-fnord 12y ago
      The three button mouse thing is pretty stupid, for one. "All those parentheses in Lisp are pretty stupid, for one." Considering that the Plan 9 UI fundamentally revolves around mouse chording, I wish you luck with that. It's a shame that Unix users are stuck in the keyboard-only mentality that they write off the mouse as some tool for lowly end users.
      - rcarmo 12y ago
        Please don't. As a Pythonista turned LISPer, I've heard all that stuff before. What is pretty stupid is being unable to use Plan9 on a modern laptop with a trackpad -- again, check my comments on previous Plan9 posts.
        mischief6 12y ago
nsajko 12y ago
Relevant SSH bashing: http://harmful.cat-v.org/software/ssh http://harmful.cat-v.org/software/ssh :)
- edwintorok 12y ago
  So what is Plan9's alternative to SSH? SSL seems even worse than SSH in terms of algorithms that you have to negotiate, and thanks to misconfigurations you can end up in a situation with no shared ciphers (if server accepts only RC4 and client rejects RC4 for example). Maybe tinyssh could qualify as an alternative...
  - 1ris 12y ago
    There is cpu for plan9. It's a remoteshell does does mount the local filesystem, so you can continue to work. I don't think tinyssh is less complex, as it is compatible.
    - edwintorok 12y ago
      According to that mailing list message cpu uses 9P+ssl, and I consider ssl more complex than ssh. May not be the case on Plan9 as it looks like their ssl only supports old algorithms and not too many of them.
pjmlp 12y ago
> Acme is amazing, but the whole thing uses mouse chording and requires a 3-button mouse, so it requires a lot of getting used to if you're newer to computers than, say, 1990. That is based on how Oberon UI works, which then again is based on Mesa/Cedar at Xerox PARC.