What do people like about Plan 9?
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Cthis 9fans conversation is perfict for advocacy
A (137.186.244.103)
#Charles Forsyth: >> A single P9 box is brain dead, it is unable to
#>> demonstrate -any- of its advantages over a traditional OS.
#
#actually, i don't think that's quite right, if you look at the
#construction of many of the services, for instance. initial design
#is often given a focus by thinking about possible use of the name
#space and then the design or structure of that name space; when it
#makes sense, the consequent split into name-space provider and
#name-space user(s) can simplify application structure, regardless
#whether distribution is involved or not. thus, there is still
#advantage in its use and significant difference with more
#`traditional' systems.
#
#now, a message-passing system (say) will obviously encourage
#applications to be based on message-passing, but plan 9's name space
#sits at a higher level of abstraction than message-passing (or soft
#SOAP), and therefore comes in at a higher level of application
#design (i'd say). use of name spaces is encouraged and supported by
#mechanisms deeply embedded into the system itself.
#
#acme provides a good example of using those ideas on a single
#machine. it's a file server but that's not primarily for reasons of
#distribution, and indeed i haven't seen much use of its services
#being subject to import or export (though they could be). its
#activity is usually confined to a single box, but it's still an
#advantageous structure. that's why i often call it an `integrating'
#not an `integrated' environment. the latter tend to be
#self-contained (i know, i know. `plug-ins', where you have to come
#to grips with deep knowledge of the IDE's internals). acme is much
#more open-ended, and i shouldn't think the typical acme client has
#any idea or need to know what acme looks like inside.
#
#keyfs and factotum similarly simplify the interface for their
#clients, by being name space servers, again in a different way from
#traditional OSs. (implementation of the service itself is also given
#focus by its being a file server.)
#
#of course, you're right that there is still greater power once the
#name space is available across a network. one of the interesting
#things about the Vita grid work to me was how representing things in
#the name space led to a simple yet flexible interface from the
#client's point of view. it's described in terms of reading and
#writing a few files, and it's natural to describe the protocol for
#the use of those files. i wasn't involved in the design or
#implementation, but i found it easy to see what a new client had to
#do, much more so than with the more traditional API/ABI descriptions.
#
#Anthony Sorace:
#
#when i was first exposed to plan 9, i was a unix admin. the very
#first thing that struck me about it was /lib/ndb. plan 9 was build
#with networks in mind, and as such the handling of them is so far
#superior to, well, everything else as to be operating at a different
#level entirely. no more changing host names in 3-5 different places,
#no more worrying about if my dns data was synched with my arp data
#and so on. designing the system around the idea of being
#network-centric meant dealing with and organizing a network was
#simple, even when not making use of the advanced networking
#capabilities the system presents. the small stuff falls out of doing
#doing the big stuff right.
#
#a few days later i had my second big "whoa" moment with plan 9 while
#while looking at aux/listen. tcp7 and tcp9 just blew my mind. i
#could write network listeners! in like three lines!!! wereas
#something like xinetd is (arguably; or not) an incremental step up
#from inetd on modern unix systems, aux/listen is something else
#entirely. i've written cross-protocol port forwarding in two lines
#of shell code. the amount of times since then that i've wished for
#aux/listen on whatever unix i was working on at the time is beyond
#number. it's not just incremental; it's totally different. and it
#works stand-alone, too.
#
#again: the small stuff falls out of doing the big stuff right.
#
#and plan 9 does the big stuff right.
D1134450467
Auriel (82.182.149.46)
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#DELETEME
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#See instead [What do people like about Plan 9]