What do you use plan 9 for?

[chutsu]

So.. been looking at plan 9, am confused what plan 9 is used for? I
mean I know its a hobbyst sort of OS, but what can you do with it
though?
Can you browse the internet?
Watch videos?
Thanks
Chris

[matt]

chutsu wrote:

Your pre-conceptions are erroneous.

http://9fans.net/

read the man pages & papers

[Robert Raschke]

I use it to manage my home network (/sys/lib/local is soooo much easier than any other network setup / dhcp / etc. thingie I've come across). I also use it as my web server, wiki and private email system. Everything that I want to keep over time (as in timemachine) is kept on my fossil/venti (bulk data like videos, I keep elsewhere, not really sure why tho'). It runs on a VIA fanless in a cupboard somewhere.

I play way too little with it these days.

It is not a mediacenter! Although with some time and muscle you can probably get pretty far down that route and have a lot more fun than attempting to grok mythtv (I gave up after 4 attempts with that monstrosity).

Robby

[Robert Raschke]

On Mon, Dec 14, 2009 at 11:22 AM, Robert Raschke <rtrl...@googlemail.com> wrote:

I use it to manage my home network (/sys/lib/local is soooo much easier than any other network

Err, sorry, meant /lib/ndb/local (not sure how that turned itself into something else).

Robby
 

[Rudolf Sykora]

2009/12/14 chutsu <chu...@gmail.com>

Well, as far as I know, you can't browse web, watch videos, as comfortably as in other systems, if at all.
But I guess this has not been the goal.
I personally don't use plan 9 directly these days, since 1) I couldn't run it on my hardware (yes, I think you can't compare plan9 to e.g. linux in this respect) and 2) I need quite a lot of software which is unavailable under plan9.
However, I currently and on day to day basis use programs from plan9 on linux, the plan9port, namely sam, acme, hoc, rc.
The simplicity and power of these is quite remarkable.
Plan 9 tools are just simple and thus easy to control (compare rc to bash), yet really powerful. That's my reason for using them.

The plan9 system itself is rather nice too, the underlying concepts are fulfilling.
On the other hand, you may not find 'all you need', which at least in my case drove me to the linux/plan9port combination. At least for now.


Ruda

[Peter A. Cejchan]

sorry to intervene... though...,
I'd like to point out, that, even a late 9fan since 2001, or so :) I
use Plan 9 on a daily basis, just switching 2 linux for
overcomplicated web pages like thode full of java, javascript,.. (type
here your most hated one...) and for scanning printed documents..
Anything beyond this I do far more easily on 9 than on Lx, indeed,

truly,
++pac

[Marina Brown]

I use plan9 at work as an email client and as a VNC client for my other
machine. I find the acme mail client under plan9 to be an especially
elegant way of dealing with my spam filled mail feed.

--- Marina Brown

[Patrick Kelly]

On Monday 14 December 2009 09:49:31 chutsu wrote:
> So.. been looking at plan 9, am confused what plan 9 is
used for? I

I use Plan 9 as a web server, compute and compile server,
and a file server for source code. It's far easier to manage than
Unix or Windows, I've had BSD systems fail me far more often
than Plan 9 has; the few cases Plan 9 has failed, it was
painless to fix.

> mean I know its a hobbyst sort of OS, but what can you do
with it
> though?

Plan 9 has been around for years. It was developed by the
same professionals that were responsible for Blit and UNIX,
and more. Plan 9 is used in some businesses for various
needs.
Hardily a hobbyist system.

> Can you browse the internet?

I believe the current browser is Abaco, forgive me if I'm
wrong. Yes you can view the Internet.
> Watch videos?
Last thing I knew there wasn't a video player. A basic video
player would be rather simple to write though.
> Thanks
> Chris
>

[Frederik Caulier]

Hello chutsu, you might want to have a look at [0].

>> Watch videos?
>        Last thing I knew there wasn't a video player. A basic video
> player would be rather simple to write though.

Well, there is at least mplayer which is available through linuxemu. [1]

[0] http://www.lsub.org/who/nemo/9.intro.pdf
[1] http://ninetimes.cat-v.org/news/2009/09/07/0-mplayer9/

[Don Bailey]

I initially used Plan 9 to learn more advanced security architecture concepts, so for me it was initially a research OS. However, I learned that it is surprisingly functional and versatile and I have used it for over 6 years now as a strong development environment, off and on as my desktop OS, and an archive server for all my backup needs. I'm not much of a multimedia guy (don't watch a lot of videos or listen to mp3s outside of iTunes) so it fits well for me.

D

[m g]

On Mon, Dec 14, 2009 at 3:30 AM, Patrick Kelly <kameo...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Monday 14 December 2009 09:49:31 chutsu wrote:
>> So.. been looking at plan 9, am confused what plan 9 is
> used for? I
>        I use Plan 9 as a web server, compute and compile server,
> and a file server for source code. It's far easier to manage than
> Unix or Windows, I've had BSD systems fail me far more often
> than Plan 9 has; the few cases Plan 9 has failed, it was
> painless to fix.

Just curious, what failed exactly? Was it the same thing between the
BSD systems and Plan 9?

[Patrick Kelly]

On Monday 14 December 2009 16:32:45 m g wrote:
> On Mon, Dec 14, 2009 at 3:30 AM, Patrick Kelly
<kameo...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > On Monday 14 December 2009 09:49:31 chutsu wrote:

> >> So.. been looking at plan 9, am confused what plan 9 is
> >
> > used for? I

> > I use Plan 9 as a web server, compute and compile server,
> > and a file server for source code. It's far easier to manage than
> > Unix or Windows, I've had BSD systems fail me far more often
> > than Plan 9 has; the few cases Plan 9 has failed, it was
> > painless to fix.
>
> Just curious, what failed exactly? Was it the same thing between the
> BSD systems and Plan 9?

I was just speaking in general; X-server crashes, (solvable) kernel
panics, mouse driver (wtf...), etc. Not talking critical or disastrous
failures here, just that it messed up.

The failings in Plan 9 have usually been the result of drivers (go
figure) and have been much smaller than issues encountered with Unix.
Usually its just small differences between the generic chip-set Plan 9's
driver was written for and the chip-set being used.

[Maurí­cio CA]

> So.. been looking at plan 9, am confused what plan 9 is used for?

I use plan 9 from user space, mostly because it's a consistent
environment. Clean regular expressions, everything as file, all
tools need small documentation etc.

I also have an old plan of teaching professional computer
programming for blind people, since I watched a movie named
Sneakers, where a blind guy named Whistler uses a computer through
something that looks like some kind of braille terminal. I've been
trying to use plan9 with command line only, so I can try to make
it into a basis for that.

Best,
Maur�cio

[Lyndon Nerenberg VE6BBM/VE7TFX]

* Mail client and server (SMTP, IMAP, running mailing lists).
* Net infrastructure (DNS, DHCP, FTP, file server).
* Long term file storage archive (36GB of iTunes mirror, repository
of ISO images for software distributions, documentation archive,
and some day soon a copy of my DVD collection).
* Document preperation and typesetting.
* Data collection, reduction, and presentation from various NMEA
devices (GPS, Loran, depth/speed sensors, VHF, engine) on my boat.
* Navigation/autopilot system for the boat (the never-ending project).
* Software-defined radios (something like GNUradio or whatever it's
called).
* Human language processing (crypto analysis tools, spell checkers).
* Playing Zork.
* Experimenting with graphics programming.
* Weather data collection and analysis.
* General programming and hacking.
* OS research.

[Axel Belinfante]

playing games (via 9vx) colfld, or sokoban, or rushhour

editing (via acme-sac)

Axel.

[hiro]

I use plan9 only to impress my lecturers and class mates with
extremely clever questions. The girls also like it a lot.
In retrospect I notice that my increased motivation for coding in java
led to better grades in the exams (And it's just easier to understand
what java is trying to do if you know how plan9 does it...).

[Stefan Groß]

LOL -- i use plan9 for my security-critical applications, mailserver as
the main thing. And for everything i need a working text-encoding
(windows clients, utf8 or 16), for the rest i use netbsd. But i'll try
that with the girls too, although i'm not in university anymore.

s.

[Jason Catena]

I use acme(-sac) from plan9port as my primary interface to unixes
(Windows). Specifically, I enjoy its ability to move quickly about
the filesystem, edit files with a pipe through any shell command, and
retain a state of the files and commands (via guide files) I access
for a particular task. I'm transitioning from LaTeX to UTF8 text
files for documents, especially my notebook: a few hundred "tagged"
files I keep in a dropboxed directory. Acme makes entering UTF8 very
easy by its lib/keyboard shortcuts (eg, Alt a e), and
src/cmd/devdraw/mklatinkbd to change them, and by bin/unicode to
figure out which characters are which. I love the plumber to start
programs to process non-textual files.

I use rc/getflags/usage to write better shell scripts at home, and at
work as an implementation layer beneath a ksh interface layer. I need
ksh as an interface layer because you can't run a hashbang-rc script
without PLAN9 set, and I can't guarantee any coworker has PLAN9 set,
or $PLAN9/bin/9 in his path, or any desire to type
/home/mydir/plan9/bin/9 before each of my scripts.

I use the text processing and filesystem utilities as better versions of same.

I use dc for all of my (especially scripted) calculating needs.

I would like to use Mail instead of Outlook, if like nmh I can pull
files from an Exchange server. I haven't really looked into this yet,
but it could be a huge win.

I know all this barely scratches the surface of what plan9(port) can do.

Jason Catena

[erik quanstrom]

> I would like to use Mail instead of Outlook, if like nmh I can pull
> files from an Exchange server. I haven't really looked into this yet,
> but it could be a huge win.

should work okay with nupas if you have imap access to
your exchange server.

- erik

[Sam Watkins]

On Mon, Dec 14, 2009 at 03:18:38PM -0200, Maur??cio CA wrote:
> I also have an old plan of teaching professional computer
> programming for blind people, since I watched a movie named
> Sneakers, where a blind guy named Whistler uses a computer through
> something that looks like some kind of braille terminal.

I have a friend Philip who is blind and a professional programmer.
He writes audio arcade games, you can try the demo (2 levels) of his
game q9 if you're interested: http://blastbay.com/q9.php

It runs on windows or in wine, I doubt whether it will work on plan 9
unless wine can run in plan 9's Linux emulation (of which I know
nothing).

He might be interested to talk to you about your idea to teach computer
programming to blind people. I can set up a meeting online or ask him
about it if you like.

I had an idea for a different of input device for blind people, for gui
/ graphical displays, which would be something like a braille terminal
but with bitmap graphics and acting like a touchscreen. It could give
audio feedback about what you are touching - it could for example read
text aloud when you touch it, and play quiet sounds or musical harmonies
corresponding to different colours and items as you touch them.

The audio feedback part could be achieved with a normal mouse or
graphics tablet / touchpad for demonstration purposes.

I think this could make it possible for blind people to play classic
arcade games (slightly modified) such as Kings Quest, not to mention do
other useful things with unmodified or minimally modified graphical
computer programs, websites, maps, etc.

Sam