News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Introduction to OS Abstractions Using Plan 9 from Bell Labs (2007) [pdf]. Parent comment

Re:Introduction to OS Abstractions Using Plan 9 from Bell La... by ernst_klim on Monday January 29, 2018 @10:33AM (#16258025)
I can't agree with that statement. Plan9 was interesting, though it was completely based on ``everything is a file'' abstraction and had no decent solution for dealing with graphics, sound, video/multimedia, input and so on. All this ``mapping bitmaps directly to and fro the framebuffer'' and ``just create a device file for keyboard input [1]'' sounds cool til you meet some real world need.

I also think that old Smalltalk and Lisp systems (e.g. Xerox PARC) had a design much more suitable for the real world applications than this ``everything is a file'' idea.

[1] https://marc.info/?l=9fans&m=111558695515846&w=2

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Introduction to OS Abstractions Using Plan 9 from Bell La... by Sir_Cmpwn on Monday January 29, 2018 @02:57PM (#16260167)
There are certain use-cases for which plan9 is not useful. I don't think a solve-every-problem-poorly box is better than a solve-several-problems-well box. For the niches it services, plan9 is sublime.
[ Parent | on HN ]