[mdlug] Plan 9 from Bell Labs

[Aaron Kulkis]

Jacob Todd wrote:
> Has anyone experimented with Plan 9 from Bell Labs?

Not yet.  But some of the ideas have been ported alread, such as the
Union File System (which is used on Knoppix).

> I discovered it a couple
> of months ago and have been reading excessively about it's design ever since.
> It's meant to be the successor to UNIX, and to quote the paper Designing
> Plan 9[1]:
> 	"Plan 9 is a distributed computing environment assembled from
> 	separate machines acting as CPU servers, file servers, and
> 	terminals. The pieces are connected by a single file-oriented
> 	protocol and local name space operations. Because the system was
> 	built from distinct, specialized components rather than similar
> 	general-purpose components, Plan 9 achieves levels of efficiency,
> 	security, simplicity, and reliability seldom realized in other
> 	distributed systems."
> 
> I've recently setup and old PC with Plan 9, but haven't had much time to play
> with it on real hardware; I'm using qemu currently to test things when I have
> time.
> 
> So, has anyone else ever heard of this or used it? Here's[2] most of the papers
> and here[3] is the official website in case anyone is interested.

A long time ago, I heard a professor say:

"I don't know what the operating system of the future will look
like, but I do know that its name is Unix."

Bits and pieces of of Plan 9 are getting ported over to Linux, and
other Unixes... eventually Unix and Linux will be indistinguishable
from the design goals of Plan 9.  Everyone will be running Plan 9,
but it will still be called Unix or Linux or something like that.

> 
> [1]http://doc.cat-v.org/plan_9/1st_edition/designing_plan_9
> [2]http://doc.cat-v.org/plan_9/ and http://plan9.bell-labs.com/sys/doc/
> [3]http://plan9.bell-labs.com/plan9/index.html
> 
> 
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