Hi 9fans,

I'm writing this in an "open letter" style because I find eric's original
post and the follow-up quite "on-topic" with respect to my unsuccessful
Plan 9 experience. To provide context, let me describe myself as a "serious
hobbyist," which means I know my way around Windows and at least 2 other
(UNIX-like) OS's--I can set up a reasonably secure sendmail and BIND
installation, write a little Perl or C program to do my bidding, and
wouldn't gawk at you if you talked about using xmllint to check a
document's well-formedness but I'm not a kernel "hacker" or a "hacker" of
any sort for that matter. I can Get My Personal Job Done (tm) but you
wouldn't hire me as an admin.

When I downloaded the Plan 9 4e ISO image I thought to myself "one more OS
adventure." It turned out to be a very frustrating one. Plan 9 wouldn't
work fine, or work at all, on a number of freeware virtualization platforms
which I am "sure" weren't especially rigged to run the other OS's they
happened to run fine. It eventually worked on QEMU. Since I'm a "serious"
hobbyist "bad" installation experience is hardly a deterrent to me--not
anymore.

well, Eris, it is quite possible that you're right. It is also
possible that you never quite got it.

Or both are possible.

ron

On Mon, Jun 30, 2008 at 2:12 PM, Eris Discordia
gmail.com> wrote:

i'm using p9p venti on linux, and it's been a total breeze to
configure and administer. the utility of hist and yesterday in my
opinion far outweigh the couple megabytes of memory that venti needs
to be running all the time (i run it on my desktop machine, not a
dedicated file server). i'm curious to know what backup system you're
using that is simpler than venti. my interest in plan 9, inferno,
octopus, &c stems mainly from my using venti for backups and finding
it to be far better that anything unix had to offer. so it you really
do have a backup system simpler and more robust than venti, i'd love
to try it out

this blog-style opinion piece does not offer anything constructive.
for example, would utf-8 qualify as a functionality that didn't exist
before plan9?

there are many plan9 ideas that have been adopted by other os --
though the results often are Frankenstein-esque.

what's sad is that unless there's a dummy's guide to
something, that something is not considered a success.

-Skip

On Mon, Jun 30, 2008 at 3:42 PM, Skip Tavakkolian <9nut@9netics.com> wrote:

Its worse than that Skip -- I imagine many would rank Apple's time
machine greater than venti just because it puts a pretty GUI on top of
crap methodology versus doing something clever under the hood. You
can't be a success unless you have an animated 3D GUI consuming most
of your CPU resources and expending all sorts of power. We should
have spent the last 20 years working on movie-OS versus actually
trying to do systems research.

-eric

Not a very kind comment. Though, it is possible that it's true.

What was there for me to understand about Plan 9 that I did not? Barring a
"mystical" bond with its exquisite kernel, of course.

--On Monday, June 30, 2008 1:01 PM -0700 ron minnich gmail.com>
wrote:

Pretty GUI doesn't hurt but it is the ease of use that makes
time machine popular. Kudos to Apple for making something as
unsexy as backups a desirable feature!

Pretty GUI may attract people initially but in the end it is
really about the ease of use. Most people just want to use a
computer, not learn all about it (just as they want to drive
a car and not look under the hood). A "Plan9 for Dummies"
book will be great but that won't help all those people who
just want to take Plan9 for a spin. With 9vx at least one
major hurdle has been removed.

BTW, I primarily use venti for backups in my multi-os
environment. I would love a fancy GUI on it. Much easier to
look for a lost picture by what it looks like than try to
remember its camera generated name like P314159.JPG.

There's still hope. With Octopus you really need to learn the
sam command language (plus some weird menus) to use your
Plan9 system from your linux/osx/windows box. Thus, if
9vx seems just too easy, you can still make things complex (for the user)
again ;)

And Windows is the Chevrolet|Ford|Toyota|\* for the common man.

We are not the common man. Buy a bus pass and push off.

On Mon, Jun 30, 2008 at 6:20 PM, Eris Discordia
gmail.com> wrote:

it seems you have done much kernel programming, eh?

iru