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Ask HN: Why isn't Plan9 popular?

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Re: Ask HN: Why isn't Plan9 popular?

#41

Post by pmjordan »

TallGuyShort wrote: post #10
jbarham wrote: post #5

IMO Plan 9 didn't gain critical mass because Unix is still "good enough". It's also very difficult to keep current with hardware drivers for a niche OS. However, there are some things that came from Plan 9 that are very much mainstream, the most notable being UTF-8 which was invented by Ken Thompson and first implemented on Plan 9. Linux's clone(2) system call is obviously inspired by Plan 9's rfork. And one could ar…

Speaking of Plan 9 and Go, I have to ask the same question: why isn't Go more popular?

I can't speak for general popularity, but the reason I haven't been able to try it as a C & C++ replacement is that I tend to use C or C++ where I have to. Weird hardware, integrating with some existing piece of software, etc. Using it for that kind of thing is hard and definitely more work than using C/C++. I guess it's the same reason I don't use D.

Re: Ask HN: Why isn't Plan9 popular?

#43

Post by gchpaco »

My theory is this:

- too weird - Plan 9 is very difficult to get used to as a user experience. Novel, fascinating, powerful, yes! But also minimal, impenetrable, and very very different from the UI you're used to as a Unix hacker.

- nonexistent marketing

- too hard to get into initially; I wish they had gone to a public source repository model earlier, although in all fairness the project predates a lot of this.

But, it was still an enormous success:

- UTF8 came from Plan 9

- Linux's clone syscall

- /proc

- numerous other minor things

The main thing I wish I saw more that was in Plan 9 was structured regular expressions. I'd love an awk based around them, or an ssam that didn't basically run sam on the file. The second thing I wish I saw more was Plan 9's per-process filesystem namespaces. Chroot and jail are crude hacks compared.

Re: Ask HN: Why isn't Plan9 popular?

#44

Post by Tamerlin »

tomotomo wrote: post #36

Similar situation to why weren't other featureful alternative OSs more popular? Like BeOS? Imagine how different today's world would be if Apple had bought BeOS instead of NeXTSTEP (which included Steve Jobs)? Often it's some large corporation's decisions that dictate what technology gets adopted, what fails.

Be did a couple of things that prevented BeOS from going anywhere.

One was basing the machine on PPC processors initially, because it limited their audience. I thought it was a cool idea, but wasn't willing to buy outdated hardware to get the OS. Mac users at the time could have simply acquired the OS and installed it, but the number of mac users willing to do that wouldn't ever be large.

One was not supporting IDE when they ported to x86. When they finally went after a large market, they made sure that hardly anyone in that market COULD use it. I had to do a lot of finagling with my computer in order to install BeOS on it.

AFAIK Apple actually DID try to buy Be before going after NeXT once they realized that Rhapsody simply wasn't going to happen. I've heard a number of stories regarding this, and I don't know which to believe; I was informed that the Be CEO rejected Apple's offer. If someone has better knowledge of that part of history than I and can confirm or correct me, that would be appreciated :)

Re: Ask HN: Why isn't Plan9 popular?

#45

Post by alnayyir »

jbarham wrote: post #30
alnayyir wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not substantially performant for use in systems programming. Not substantially powerful or enough libraries for use in web dev (yet, this could change). Global GC (inappropriate for the niche it's ostensibly targeting). Overly opinionated about concurrency. (C++ and Java are the gold-standard for library-centric concurrency methodologies) Go sits in an uncanny valley.

> C++ and Java are the gold-standard for library-centric concurrency methodologies The last time I checked concurrency isn't possible with standard C++. And multi-threaded programming in Java has been called many things, but "gold-standard" isn't one of them.

>The last time I checked concurrency isn't possible with standard C++

If you don't know, then I can't tell you. People have been doing threading, re-entrant code, libevent/libev in C and C++ for decades. (cf. DragonflyBSD)

I didn't say it was trivial, just that it's an industry standard for when you need to get things done (TM).

Re: Ask HN: Why isn't Plan9 popular?

#46

Post by joey_bananas »

gchpaco wrote: post #43

My theory is this: - too weird - Plan 9 is very difficult to get used to as a user experience. Novel, fascinating, powerful, yes! But also minimal, impenetrable, and very very different from the UI you're used to as a Unix hacker. - nonexistent marketing - too hard to get into initially; I wish they had gone to a public source repository model earlier, although in all fairness the project predates a lot of this. But,…

> - UTF8 came from Plan 9

Not really, Ken Thompson certainly contributed to it, but they didn't invent it.

Re: Ask HN: Why isn't Plan9 popular?

#47

Post by jbarham »

alnayyir wrote: post #45
jbarham wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> C++ and Java are the gold-standard for library-centric concurrency methodologies The last time I checked concurrency isn't possible with standard C++. And multi-threaded programming in Java has been called many things, but "gold-standard" isn't one of them.

>The last time I checked concurrency isn't possible with standard C++ If you don't know, then I can't tell you. People have been doing threading, re-entrant code, libevent/libev in C and C++ for decades. (cf. DragonflyBSD) I didn't say it was trivial, just that it's an industry standard for when you need to get things done (TM).

It appears you are being intentionally obtuse, so I repeat: Neither the current C and C++ language standards provide any support whatsoever for concurrent programming. Therefore you cannot do concurrent programming in either of those languages without resorting to using operating system specific or 3rd party libraries.

DragonflyBSD, a project that was only started in 2003, has obviously not been around for "decades" so hardly serves to advance your claim.

Re: Ask HN: Why isn't Plan9 popular?

#48

Post by jff »

konad wrote: post #35

I've been a Plan9 user/dev since 2000. Have been to two of the IWP9 conferences - sadly I won't be going to Seattle for the 5th unless I score some big cash in the next few weeks - http://iwp9.quanstro.net/ * Licensing - Plan9 wasn't open when open was the in thing. * No web browser - just as the web became a big thing, no web browser is a deathtrap. * The gap is too great a leap - until the recent LinuxEMU almost NO…

Hey! I'll be at IWP9 5e this year if things go well. Fun to see another Plan 9 user on here. I'm an intern with Sandia Labs, working on my master's degree at the moment, so I've got this work I've been cooking up all ready for a Work In Progress report at IWP9.

To expand a bit, I think Plan 9 has potential in the world of scientific computing. There are a few things scientists expect on their supercomputers, and Plan 9 either has them or can have them without unreasonable effort. They include: MPI, Python (already available), Linux compatibility layer (exists), and FORTRAN 77 (this can happen if we reaallllly need it). Check out the HARE project, where Plan 9 was ported to the Blue Gene systems as part of the ongoing Fast-OS project, which aims to find a better OS for supercomputing. (Basically, Linux is too huge, whereas custom kernels are just too stripped down and customized. Plan 9 is small but general)

Re: Ask HN: Why isn't Plan9 popular?

#49

Post by wmf »

Tamerlin wrote: post #44
tomotomo wrote: post #36

Similar situation to why weren't other featureful alternative OSs more popular? Like BeOS? Imagine how different today's world would be if Apple had bought BeOS instead of NeXTSTEP (which included Steve Jobs)? Often it's some large corporation's decisions that dictate what technology gets adopted, what fails.

Be did a couple of things that prevented BeOS from going anywhere. One was basing the machine on PPC processors initially, because it limited their audience. I thought it was a cool idea, but wasn't willing to buy outdated hardware to get the OS. Mac users at the time could have simply acquired the OS and installed it, but the number of mac users willing to do that wouldn't ever be large. One was not supporting IDE w…

Be definitely wasted a lot of time in strategic churn, porting from Hobbit to PowerPC, BeBox to Mac, PowerPC to x86, PCs to thin clients, etc. For the brief time that BeOS ran on Macs, the likely goal was not to get Mac users to switch to BeOS but to convince Apple to buy Be. I heard that Apple offered $75M for Be and JLG refused. (Some people assume that Apple offered the same amount for Be and NeXT, but that's pretty unlikely considering the difference in maturity.)

BTW, where you wrote Rhapsody you meant Copland. NeXTSTEP was renamed to Rhapsody (and then OS X) after Apple bought it.

Re: Ask HN: Why isn't Plan9 popular?

#50

Post by NonEUCitizen »

TallGuyShort wrote: post #10
jbarham wrote: post #5

IMO Plan 9 didn't gain critical mass because Unix is still "good enough". It's also very difficult to keep current with hardware drivers for a niche OS. However, there are some things that came from Plan 9 that are very much mainstream, the most notable being UTF-8 which was invented by Ken Thompson and first implemented on Plan 9. Linux's clone(2) system call is obviously inspired by Plan 9's rfork. And one could ar…

Speaking of Plan 9 and Go, I have to ask the same question: why isn't Go more popular?

No support for apt-get installation?
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