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Plan 9 is a uniquely complete operating system

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Re: Plan 9 is a uniquely complete operating system

#51

Post by pjmlp »

stinos wrote: post #46
pjmlp wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not at all, it has C++ complexity level, if one wants to master it at all levels. Additionally, since even minor versions introduce breaking changes, getting something from e.g. Python 1.6 to run on 3.12 is an exercise in trial and error, or unexpected surprises at some moment at runtime.

> Not at all, it has C++ complexity level, if one wants to master it at all levels. Would be interesting to hear what levels you think those are because as someone who has been learning and writing C++ and Python for over 20 years now, I'd say there's no level of Python which comes even close to the complexity of C++ at a comparative level. > getting something from e.g. Python 1.6 to run on 3.12 is an exercise in tri…

Easy, mastering the language (everything you can do with it, everything!), the main language runtime, the C extensions API, and the complete standard library.

Then just like C++, add the set of key implementations, CPython, Cython, PyPy, key libraries everyone uses (parallel to Boost).

Since you have such a wide Python experience, naturally you already printed out all the PDFs of Python documentation, and read them cover to cover.

I did such thing back on Python 2.0 days, and it only grew bigger.

How many pages was it again?

Re: Plan 9 is a uniquely complete operating system

#52

Post by pjmlp »

bboygravity wrote: post #41
pjmlp wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would be Inferno, not Plan 9. COM is everywhere on Windows, specially since Vista, as the WinDev regained the control they thought Longhorn was going to take away from them. One of Powershell strengths is the easy access to COM, just like .NET, frameworks. Linux could do the same with D-Bus, but alas so is the distributions wars, and hate on anything like proprietary OSes, that it only has a minor role on system…

Intuitively this sounds like asking for dependency and API hell? Imagine writing a huge complex program that is dependent of communication between smaller existing programs. Either you use the default programs that where shipped with all the different versions of OS'es with different distro's (never going to work, too many different versions of programs and their communication interfaces) or you ship certain fixed ve…

Components are libraries, which aren't stuck in a C view of UNIX world.

Re: Plan 9 is a uniquely complete operating system

#53

Post by Philip-J-Fry »

bboygravity wrote: post #41
pjmlp wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would be Inferno, not Plan 9. COM is everywhere on Windows, specially since Vista, as the WinDev regained the control they thought Longhorn was going to take away from them. One of Powershell strengths is the easy access to COM, just like .NET, frameworks. Linux could do the same with D-Bus, but alas so is the distributions wars, and hate on anything like proprietary OSes, that it only has a minor role on system…

Intuitively this sounds like asking for dependency and API hell? Imagine writing a huge complex program that is dependent of communication between smaller existing programs. Either you use the default programs that where shipped with all the different versions of OS'es with different distro's (never going to work, too many different versions of programs and their communication interfaces) or you ship certain fixed ve…

These programs are effectively libraries. They implement a known interface.

Except at the end of the day, the interface can be as simple as a stream of bytes over a socket. If I want a h264 decoder in my application I could just pipe a stream to a specific program made to decode it. That could be written in Python, in Rust, in C, in Go, etc. whereas dynamic libraries don't give you that freedom as you have to abide by the ABI defined by the host application.

Re: Plan 9 is a uniquely complete operating system

#54

Post by mananaysiempre »

bboygravity wrote: post #41
pjmlp wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would be Inferno, not Plan 9. COM is everywhere on Windows, specially since Vista, as the WinDev regained the control they thought Longhorn was going to take away from them. One of Powershell strengths is the easy access to COM, just like .NET, frameworks. Linux could do the same with D-Bus, but alas so is the distributions wars, and hate on anything like proprietary OSes, that it only has a minor role on system…

Intuitively this sounds like asking for dependency and API hell? Imagine writing a huge complex program that is dependent of communication between smaller existing programs. Either you use the default programs that where shipped with all the different versions of OS'es with different distro's (never going to work, too many different versions of programs and their communication interfaces) or you ship certain fixed ve…

A “program that is dependent on communication between smaller existing programs” is essentially the definition of a shell script, and those are usually not as problematic as your describe until you go out and try different independent implementations of the tools as opposed to mere versions. Compatibility problems definitely happen, but not as often as you seem to expect.

I’d guess the trick is that you’re not thinking small enough. GNU coreutils, etc. are not minimal by any means, but compared with even late-90s graphical desktop software they are still fairly compact, and you’re rarely using each and every tool at once. And the smaller the tool and the problem it targets, the more likely it is that the problem is mostly a solved one, so interface churn is less necessary.

I’m not sure every problem area is amenable to this—GUIs and things best expressed as GUIs seem particularly stubborn. (It would be sad if OLE/ActiveX was the best possible solution.) But some are, and few enough people are trying to expand the simplicity frontier for their real-world tasks in recent years that I don’t believe the state of the art of the 1980s is the farthest it can reach, either.

Re: Plan 9 is a uniquely complete operating system

#55

Post by irusensei »

GianFabien wrote: post #2

I've played with Plan9 several times, but never used it seriously. The aesthetics that puts me off. Would have been great if they had taken guidance from BeOS / Haiku-OS for the look and feel. Heck, even Windows 95 would have been an improvement.

The UI is called Rio. It’s simple yet functional and the plumbing thing is kinda cool. The thing that irks me with Plan9 (I have tried 9front) is the lack of tab completion on the shell. It’s easy to input garbage on the screen and contrary to most modern shells where you can just skip a line you need to use your mouse to put the cursor back where the prompt is.

Of course lots of it might be skill issue.

Re: Plan 9 is a uniquely complete operating system

#56

Post by irusensei »

pjmlp wrote: post #29

Superceded by Inferno as follow up project, where Limbo took the role of the abandoned Alef language for Plan 9. I always have the impression the discussion stops on a gas station the middle of the road, instead of on the destination.

I keep reading this but if you compare the latest version of the 9front fork with the source code with inferno there is no doubt 9front looks a lot more polished. FFS I had to download some guys amd64 fork because the vita nuova bit bucket only has i386 sources.

Re: Plan 9 is a uniquely complete operating system

#58

Post by pjmlp »

irusensei wrote: post #56
pjmlp wrote: post #29

Superceded by Inferno as follow up project, where Limbo took the role of the abandoned Alef language for Plan 9. I always have the impression the discussion stops on a gas station the middle of the road, instead of on the destination.

I keep reading this but if you compare the latest version of the 9front fork with the source code with inferno there is no doubt 9front looks a lot more polished. FFS I had to download some guys amd64 fork because the vita nuova bit bucket only has i386 sources.

A fork doesn't count, that isn't how the Plan 9 => Inferno evolution took place.

Otherwise we could also go back to Windows NT with POSIX subsystem, fork it to a version where the UNIX experience was first class like on NeXTSTEP and macOS, and then praise Windows NT UNIX qualities, that weren't there in first place. (Naturally ignoring the access to source code issue).

Re: Plan 9 is a uniquely complete operating system

#59

Post by pjmlp »

flomo wrote: post #22
linguae wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Counterpoint: Plan 9 is supposed to be the ultimate realization of the Unix philosophy. One important aspect of the Unix philosophy is composable software. Instead of large, feature-rich programs where functionality is often siloed off from other programs, users have a toolbox of small, composable programs that “do only one thing and do it well” and that they could connect together using pipes and other inter-process…

Agreed. And one could argue that Unix wasn't really popular because of the "philosophy", but because it would get out of the way and let you run big monolithic applications like OracleDB or CAD software or even Emacs and etc. So no popular application using "Plan 9 philosophy" ever emerged.

Even the UNIX philosophy is something that gets praised all around on UNIX FOSS circles, which I seldom saw anyone carying about on commercial UNIX systems, starting with my introduction to Xenix in 1993.

It kind of feels a bit of cargo cult, praising it all the time.

Re: Plan 9 is a uniquely complete operating system

#60

Post by pjmlp »

linguae wrote: post #30
flomo wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. And one could argue that Unix wasn't really popular because of the "philosophy", but because it would get out of the way and let you run big monolithic applications like OracleDB or CAD software or even Emacs and etc. So no popular application using "Plan 9 philosophy" ever emerged.

I agree, but I believe the fact there are no popular applications that fully embrace the Unix/Plan 9 philosophy is the point of the philosophy. Generic tools that can be composed versus end-to-end applications. Both have their advantages and disadvantages, though component-based software doesn’t preclude the development of end-to-end applications using these components. In my opinion I believe the reason end-to-end a…

There were plenty of ActiveX lego components to build Photoshop like applications on Windows during the 1990's, back when buying libraries was a thing professionals would care about.
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