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9front "This Was Supposed to Be Fun" Released

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Re: 9front "This Was Supposed to Be Fun" Released

#11

Post by perching_aix »

Suzuran wrote: post #7
BSDobelix wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not research it yourself instead of asking others? Am I the only one who thinks this is becoming increasingly common?

"We" don't research it ourselves because we are increasingly taught that we are either too stupid to conduct our own research or not qualified to understand the results, and we must rely on someone else who represents a position of authority. Preferably politicians/influencers/marketing departments/AI models/etc. which can then direct us to make purchasing decisions of benefit to our masters.

Society is hierarchical, and there are people who are closer to various fires, and thus do have more authoritative insight, than others.

I don't see merit to discounting this, even though cheap deflections to authority do bother me too.

Re: 9front "This Was Supposed to Be Fun" Released

#12

Post by lproven »

iberator wrote: post #2

What is it? Some hobby operating system or what?

9front is the community fork of the OS that the creators of UNIX and C did next.

This is what Dennis Ritchie and Ken Thompson did to fix the faults in the Unix design.

Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, and all the other FOSS Unix-like OSes are community recreations of the flawed AT&T Unix.

9front is the continuation of the OS that came next.

Re: 9front "This Was Supposed to Be Fun" Released

#13

Post by MisterTea »

lproven wrote: post #12
iberator wrote: post #2

What is it? Some hobby operating system or what?

9front is the community fork of the OS that the creators of UNIX and C did next. This is what Dennis Ritchie and Ken Thompson did to fix the faults in the Unix design. Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, and all the other FOSS Unix-like OSes are community recreations of the flawed AT&T Unix. 9front is the continuation of the OS that came next.

Plan 9 is mostly Rob Pikes idea and did not involve Ritchie heavily. https://doc.cat-v.org/plan_9/1st_edition/designing_plan_9

Recently, Pike commented that he designed Plan 9 so he could build the windowing system he wanted. (edit: oops, link) https://9fans.topicbox.com/groups/9fans/T4fec171fec7e3845-M2...

Re: 9front "This Was Supposed to Be Fun" Released

#14

Post by Suzuran »

perching_aix wrote: post #11
Suzuran wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"We" don't research it ourselves because we are increasingly taught that we are either too stupid to conduct our own research or not qualified to understand the results, and we must rely on someone else who represents a position of authority. Preferably politicians/influencers/marketing departments/AI models/etc. which can then direct us to make purchasing decisions of benefit to our masters.

Society is hierarchical, and there are people who are closer to various fires, and thus do have more authoritative insight, than others. I don't see merit to discounting this, even though cheap deflections to authority do bother me too.

The problem is not that society is hierarchical, the problem is that position in the hierarchy rarely maps to expertise or trustworthiness. Instead it usually maps to whoever is best at exploiting and then destroying others to raise their position in the hierarchy.

Edit for clarity: The biggest part of the "You're too stupid..." thing I mentioned is that we are being led to believe we can't even determine who is and isn't credible in any given field, so we must solicit claimed authority and then blindly obey whoever shows up first. Sometimes this solicitation is in the form of a post, but increasingly it's an AI-generated "web" search response where the index/training data has been torqued to direct people toward economic outcomes desired by the AI/search engine's owners.

Re: 9front "This Was Supposed to Be Fun" Released

#15

Post by znpy »

BSDobelix wrote: post #5
iberator wrote: post #2

What is it? Some hobby operating system or what?

Why not research it yourself instead of asking others? Am I the only one who thinks this is becoming increasingly common?

> Am I the only one who thinks this is becoming increasingly common?

Yeah, and it’s an awful attitude.

Honest questions are hardly ever an issue.

Re: 9front "This Was Supposed to Be Fun" Released

#16

Post by MisterTea »

wwalexander wrote: post #3
iberator wrote: post #2

What is it? Some hobby operating system or what?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plan_9_from_Bell_Labs > Unofficial development for the system also continues on the 9front fork, where active contributors provide monthly builds and new functionality. So far, the 9front fork has provided the system Wi-Fi drivers, audio drivers, USB support and built-in game emulator, along with other features.

To be fair drivers for all that existed already but support was very very narrow in terms of variety. e.g. there was wifi support for like one or two cards but handled on a per card basis - kinda hacky. 9front now has a clean portable wifi interface that spans all the architectures so the Pi and PC have the same wifi infrastructure despite having different interfaces and chips. Same with PCI, it was refactored to be portable among all supported platforms, e.g. the Pi 4 and PC.

Re: 9front "This Was Supposed to Be Fun" Released

#17

Post by lproven »

MisterTea wrote: post #13
lproven wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

9front is the community fork of the OS that the creators of UNIX and C did next. This is what Dennis Ritchie and Ken Thompson did to fix the faults in the Unix design. Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, and all the other FOSS Unix-like OSes are community recreations of the flawed AT&T Unix. 9front is the continuation of the OS that came next.

Plan 9 is mostly Rob Pikes idea and did not involve Ritchie heavily. https://doc.cat-v.org/plan_9/1st_edition/designing_plan_9 Recently, Pike commented that he designed Plan 9 so he could build the windowing system he wanted. (edit: oops, link) https://9fans.topicbox.com/groups/9fans/T4fec171fec7e3845-M2...

I knew this about Pike, but not Ritchie. Thanks.

I think, though, that one of the vastly underestimated aspects of Plan 9/9front is its simplified C.

AIUI one of the biggest differences is that a file is not allowed to `#include` anything that has already been #included in a parent project. You are not allowed to nest #includes.

The result is vastly reduced compile times. I have read claims of over 1000x fewer lines of code going through the compiler.

(Sure, disk caching helps a lot, but it still has to go through CPU.)

Cleaning up a codebase is a massive PITA but it's a one-time job and I have read comments that once you learn this, it quickly becomes habit.

Imagine if that was put into C29 as an advisory.

Decades and centuries of compute-time saved.

This is standard in Go, which is of course Pike's more recent baby.

ANSI C let you get away with this, which sounds like one of the more epic mistakes:

https://go.dev/talks/2012/splash.article#TOC_5.

Re: 9front "This Was Supposed to Be Fun" Released

#18

Post by pram »

MisterTea wrote: post #13
lproven wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

9front is the community fork of the OS that the creators of UNIX and C did next. This is what Dennis Ritchie and Ken Thompson did to fix the faults in the Unix design. Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, and all the other FOSS Unix-like OSes are community recreations of the flawed AT&T Unix. 9front is the continuation of the OS that came next.

Plan 9 is mostly Rob Pikes idea and did not involve Ritchie heavily. https://doc.cat-v.org/plan_9/1st_edition/designing_plan_9 Recently, Pike commented that he designed Plan 9 so he could build the windowing system he wanted. (edit: oops, link) https://9fans.topicbox.com/groups/9fans/T4fec171fec7e3845-M2...

That XTerm readme is pretty funny

"Abandon All Hope, Ye Who Enter Here"

Re: 9front "This Was Supposed to Be Fun" Released

#19

Post by scoot »

pram wrote: post #18
MisterTea wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plan 9 is mostly Rob Pikes idea and did not involve Ritchie heavily. https://doc.cat-v.org/plan_9/1st_edition/designing_plan_9 Recently, Pike commented that he designed Plan 9 so he could build the windowing system he wanted. (edit: oops, link) https://9fans.topicbox.com/groups/9fans/T4fec171fec7e3845-M2...

That XTerm readme is pretty funny "Abandon All Hope, Ye Who Enter Here"

It's a quote from Dante's Inferno

Re: 9front "This Was Supposed to Be Fun" Released

#20

Post by BSDobelix »

znpy wrote: post #15
BSDobelix wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not research it yourself instead of asking others? Am I the only one who thinks this is becoming increasingly common?

> Am I the only one who thinks this is becoming increasingly common? Yeah, and it’s an awful attitude. Honest questions are hardly ever an issue.

>Yeah, and it’s an awful attitude.

I had a conversation with some 'educated' people about the war in Ukraine. After about ten minutes, I told them if we please can stop and if we could change the topic.

They were incredibly uneducated, I would even say disinterested in the history as we ~know it.

They saw everything in black and white, with no shades of grey.

Long story short, I told them to please educate themselves on what happened from 2013/14 until today and make their own observations (just so they can sprinkle a little grey to their world view, NOT change it just add some nuances to it).

Their answer? No time, also not that interested.

I was a little bit sad to say at least.

Maybe has something todo with that:

https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/human-dynamics/articles...

>>From searching to asking: knowledge and authority in the age of Generative AI

3. Cognitive consequences:

The difference lies in how the information is encountered. Search-based learning requires effort. Users must sift through multiple sources, evaluate relevance, and integrate partial information into a coherent whole. These activities promote deeper cognitive processing.

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