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Plan 9 from Bell Labs is the closest you are going to get that is usable for awhile. With only 28 ioctl most of the calls are libary calls. It is the most hybrid of all the kernels out there. Using solely one method for everything is not always good because sometimes other methods are simplier/faster/require less instructions/etc.

Check out ip(3)

US military uses Plan 9 for many of its services. Their new GPS system that was used in Iraq was based on it. Basicly it was a system there you could where everyone is with about 1.5s delay. Kinda of making real war more video game like - except people actually get hurt and die. :( The US government hires numerous Plan 9 developers. Most notably, Ronald G. Minnich.

Top of my list of pet peeves is criticisms just like this.

Todays alternatives:
http://www.gnustep.org/ different desktop
http://www.enlightenment.org/Enlightenment/DR17/ (another different desktop)
http://cm.bell-labs.com/plan9/

How about putting some time and effort into ONE new and different thing, then let's talk about new and different okay?

Drink from the furry fountain of life and your thirst will be quenched.

One more vessel must you seek : http://www.maht0x0r.net/the_mug.jpg

I have to say YUCK to your mockup.
The scrollbars looks alien.
The original acme - http://cm.bell-labs.com/plan9/img/screenshot.gif does it right. (Ok, that gif isn't entirely representative beeing 8bit colors)

acme is not everything

this is my desktop : http://www.maht0x0r.net/desktop.jpg

I am indifferent to your opinion.

> It's obvious you're not interested in winning converts

take it, leave it, whatever

http://cm.bell-labs.com/sys/doc/ was all it took me.

Yes it is a 1994 paper. Much has changed in acme and Plan 9 but it still is currently the best piece of work explaining acme. In the future, maybe the Wikipedia article will be better because its updated, but today that is not the case.

Yes it is a 1994 paper. Much has changed in acme and Plan 9 but it still is currently the best piece of work explaining acme. In the future, maybe the Wikipedia article will be better because its updated, but today that is not the case.

Well each window has a text buffer at the top. Surely it isn't hard to get to the top of the window? By window I mean an acme window.

If you're editing over a remote link, it really depends how limited you are in the protocols you can use. If you've only got telnet/ssh, you're probably screwed. If, however, you can run something on the other end, then you've got a world of opportunity, as this (remote access) is the kind of thing that plan 9 and inferno excel at. Using a straight telnet/ssh link these days makes me feel like I've got one arm tied behind my back.

For using acme remotely, the best option is to run something, for example u9fs to export the files you wish to edit, then import the filesystem, whereupon you can use acme to edit the files in it. It's also possible to run acme remotely, (by using inferno or drawterm and making a cpu connection), but the graphics speed will then be predicated on the speed of your connection, which can make this unrealistic.

If you're editing over a remote link, it really depends how limited you are in the protocols you can use. If you've only got telnet/ssh, you're probably screwed. If, however, you can run something on the other end, then you've got a world of opportunity, as this (remote access) is the kind of thing that plan 9 and inferno excel at. Using a straight telnet/ssh link these days makes me feel like I've got one arm tied behind my back.

For using acme remotely, the best option is to run something, for example u9fs to export the files you wish to edit, then import the filesystem, whereupon you can use acme to edit the files in it. It's also possible to run acme remotely, (by using inferno or drawterm and making a cpu connection), but the graphics speed will then be predicated on the speed of your connection, which can make this unrealistic.

It's not remotely similar. See http://plan9.bell-labs.com/sys/doc/acme.html for details.

One thing that I think people find hard to understand about acme is just how powerful the mouse actually is. By assigning universally applicable actions to each mouse button (select, execute, look), and giving it the entire window contents as its domain (almost any part of which is user-changeable), the mouse is no longer something that must be moved in order to let the keyboard do something, but an expressive tool in its own right. Add mouse chording to that, enabling cut, copy and paste of arbitrary pieces of text with no keyboard input necessary, and it's the keyboard which is more seldom used. I've looked over the shoulder of developers using acme to edit and debug software and seen 20 minutes go by without the keyboard being used once! And in that time, programs have been run, projects built, and many source files browsed and edited.

It's not something that can be fully appreciated until you've used it for a while. But once hooked, you won't find anything to beat it.

One thing that I think people find hard to understand about acme is just how powerful the mouse actually is. By assigning universally applicable actions to each mouse button (select, execute, look), and giving it the entire window contents as its domain (almost any part of which is user-changeable), the mouse is no longer something that must be moved in order to let the keyboard do something, but an expressive tool in its own right. Add mouse chording to that, enabling cut, copy and paste of arbitrary pieces of text with no keyboard input necessary, and it's the keyboard which is more seldom used. I've looked over the shoulder of developers using acme to edit and debug software and seen 20 minutes go by without the keyboard being used once! And in that time, programs have been run, projects built, and many source files browsed and edited.

It's not something that can be fully appreciated until you've used it for a while. But once hooked, you won't find anything to beat it.

A Windows 95/NT version of Sam, currently distributed in binary form only, is available from ftp://netlib.bell-labs.com/netlib/research/sam.exe

From Acme: A User Interface for Programmers Acme is a new program, a combined window system, editor, and shell, that applies some of the ideas distilled by Oberon. Where Oberon uses objects and modules within a programming language (also called Oberon), Acme uses files and commands within an existing operating system (Plan 9). Unlike Oberon, Acme does not yet have support for graphical output, just text. At least for now, the work on Acme has concentrated on producing the smoothest user interface possible for a programmer at work.

Thats the great part of acme. Its also a fileserver. Actually thats the great part of Plan 9 and Inferno operating systems.

I'm not exactly Mr. Acme-expert over here to be honest. I've only played with it occasionally, and not recently. I'm also not really trying to "convince" anyone, just trying to provide a quickie explanation of what I understand makes Acme different. You also have to remember that Acme was designed to run on Plan9, so a lot of what it can do had a lot to do with 9P. Acme is sort of bringing the whole pipes / everything is a file concept up to the level of the editor. I would suggest if you want to be convinced, you either a) download it and try it out or b) Read this: http://cm.bell-labs.com/sys/doc/acme.html which was linked to in an earlier post.

There is also a new web browser called abaco for Plan 9 that is progressing fast.

The Wikipedia article is crap. Rob Pikes 1994 paper: Acme: A User Interface for Programmers explains what acme is. Also check out the introduction documentary when you first start acme.

Worthwhile read: "Acme: A User Interface for Programmers" (PDF). Its a bit outdated but explains acme beautifully.

Worthwhile read: "Acme: A User Interface for Programmers" (PDF). Its a bit outdated but explains acme beautifully.

IDEs are a brick wall to composition.

Just get a proper editor

As they kids would say : "IDEs are gay"

Either through plan9 port or the real thing

Venti is block level and, as such, coalesces identical blocks, a bit like LZW, so backing up 100 Windows machines doesn't take up 100x the disk space of backing up 1 windows machine.

http://cm.bell-labs.com/sys/doc/venti.html

http://cm.bell-labs.com/magic/man2html/8/venti

http://swtch.com/plan9port/man/man8/venti.html
http://swtch.com/plan9port/man/man8/vbackup.html

Sean Quinlan (one of the 2 Venti inventors) moved from Bell Labs by Google.

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MySQL r0x0rs

Either through plan9 port or the real thing

Venti is block level and, as such, coalesces identical blocks, a bit like LZW, so backing up 100 Windows machines doesn't take up 100x the disk space of backing up 1 windows machine.

http://cm.bell-labs.com/sys/doc/venti.html

http://cm.bell-labs.com/magic/man2html/8/venti

http://swtch.com/plan9port/man/man8/venti.html
http://swtch.com/plan9port/man/man8/vbackup.html

Sean Quinlan (one of the 2 Venti inventors) moved from Bell Labs by Google.

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MySQL r0x0rs

Just like anal sex doesn't work on MY ass, java doesn't run on MY OS

The twentieth century called, said would you like its idea now

http://plan9.bell-labs.com/plan9/

If only the same was true with our little OS over here.

If only the same was true with our little OS over here.

Yes BSD sockets are very simple. Yes that is why every fucking application had to be updated for ipv6 support. And for God's sake yes X Windows is bloody simple. Are you OUT OF YOUR MIND?!? Think to yourself why the creaters of this philosophy have said its long dead.

Here is a nickle, kid. Get yourself a better OS.

Ok. I will be rated troll like last time, when I said that Debian is a very good platform for customized distributions (it was before widespread successes of ubuntu and mepis).
I see that both families of systems - the Unix heritage (Linux, Solaris, BSD less so - they are more true to the original Unix, maybe with exception of dragonflyBSD and Darwin) and the VMS heritage (I mean Windows here) are converging. The aim seems to be a kind of thread based, light-kernel operating system, that can be easily parallelized/or distributed, with object oriented interface at both Kernel and User levels. The Unix was taken in this direction by Plan9, Mach and NeXT.
Think I am a loony? look here: Plan9 shell introduction.
Unix shell (text) ---> Plan9 shell (arrays of strings) --> Microsoft shell (objects).
I'm also certain that there will come time when Windows will become Open Source, like Solaris. Not that I like Windows or whatever but Open Source is more functional, so the convergence process will also take Windows in that direction.

Bloody gonna need to bootstrap from the transistors up to be 100% safe. Don't forget to hand assemble your own compiler. Sheesh!

Plan 9 offers a completely usable, modern desktop.

Plan 9 is a research operating system. I like Plan 9's architecture, file system, and many other ideas. Plan 9's goal is to further extend the notion of Unix's "everything is a file" idea. Everything, even the windowing system (rio), is a file. Plan 9 also vastly simplifies systems programming (compared to Unix). Plan 9 is a wonderful research operating system that I would love to tinker with and explore.

However, it isn't a desktop replacement for Windows/OS X users or even for Linux or BSD users. There is no office suites (or even a word processor unless you love text editors and TeX or troff), no browser on the scale of Firefox or Konqueror, no music/video players, nothing that 99% of the world uses with a computer. Besides, I'm pretty sure that users are more comfortable using this desktop, these desktops, or especially this desktop before they use this desktop. For even the most ardent *nix hackers or computer scientists, Plan 9 would be something they played with on the side (kind of like Minix or an operating system that they're working on), and Linux/BSD is their main OS.

I like Plan 9, but it isn't a desktop OS; it's a research OS. However, Plan 9 is a very innovative operating system; I wish that the major OS sellers (I'm talking to you, Apple and Microsoft) would be a bit more cutting-edge in the architecture of their OSes rather than just appearances (even though Apple has done very well since the bought NeXT; they have a hybrid kernel, for one). Plan 9, L4, the MIT exokernel project, and other projects look very interesting, and I would like to see them in use.

How can you not mod this one as completely hilarious!!! Plan 9 http://cm.bell-labs.com/plan9/&e=9797/ doesn't have a functional web browser. "The best way to get a fully supported web browser under plan9 is to use the vnc client to connect to a linux or Windows box. This performs very well if used over a fast network connection." The bunny logo is amazingly cute.

Wow, thank you for your wondeful insight. Isn't it great that /. is filled with anonymous cowards such as yourself who are there to lend us their unique knowledge as to how the world works? Just one question, how do you then explain all the publications made by compaies like IBM, Bell Labs, and yes, even the mother of all that is evil, Microsoft? I'm sure you have a great explanation, after all you are obviously in academia and of course all the ignorant and arrogant jackasses of the world (which of course you would be amoung if corporations such as these are indeed publishing research) are all confined to the evil world of corporations. I'm just really eager to hear this magical explanation that will refute all this real world evidence to the contrary of your claim.

Have you ever looked at Plan 9? (Its official page is here, but frankly the Wikipedia article is better.)

I think it was basically what you are envisioning -- a ground-up reconstruction of UNIX, with an emphasis on networking and the distributed multiuser environment, developed and backed by a large corporation with deep pockets and substantial R&D resources. It doesn't have a Linux binary compatibility layer, although it seems like you could probably build one if you really wanted to and were running it on a standard x86 architecture. From what I've read, the majority of Plan 9 installations were on big server iron, so I don't think such a thing was made.

The "Plan 9 from Bell Labs" GUI doesn't have double clicking.

Of course the amount of 'compression' you get is firmly under YMMV.

If you tracked deltas within files, you could look to xdelta as a filesystem, or possibly CVS.

If you were just tracking changed files, you could look to Plan 9 filesystem or Dirvish.

What might be up: Picture backing up a number of fairly similar machines (say, a group of Windows machines built from a common image), & noting duplicated files, only saving each once. You could count the space saved by a link as compression. If you have a homogeneous sample, you save lots of space & claim ridiculous compression.

..or at least built a system in which identical blocks of data would only ever be stored...once.

After all, Glenda is drawn by Renee French.

"Plan 9 from Bell Labs" the only OMG!!! Ponies OS.

Seriously, we (the plan9 community - there could be up to 100 of us!) sure hope they "get" plan9.

Peter Quinn, are you smoking crack again?
what makes you think the "ponytails and sandals set" is cramping linux adoption?
maybe if you wouldn't wear such hideous ties, people might start believing you...

take a look at a bell labs publicity photo of UNIX inventors dennis ritchie and ken thompson working at a pdp-11 console(a paper console at that!)... if the room they were working in wasn't so cold, they'd probably be wearing sandals! and shorts! and drinking lot's of yoohoo!!!

shhh... they were in the process of growing their ponytails when they took this photo, but don't tell peter, or he will call unix a frivolous operating system.

in all seriousness mr. quinn, i think you need to wake up. suits and ties and "appropriate dress" isn't going to make a difference in linux adoption. linux and open source technology will/will not be adopted for a variety of reasons: existing technology, legacy systems, budget, skill set, vendors, etc. dress code is probably not even a blip on the radar of consideration.

  just a thought, but maybe if you had a ponytail, you might have made more headway with your open document initiative... government people would have looked at you and thought "hmmm, ponytail, sandals, tech-talk... he must know what he's talking about!"

Oh well he re-wrote some code
You realize that Linus himself rewrote some code
See here
http://www.bell-labs.com/history/unix/ he..he..

On whether I have the 45 spare minutes required to compile my OS and applications from scratch ?

The best thing about Plan 9 is that lovely and cute bunny! Oh man, I just LOOOOOOOVE that Glenda bunny!

This may very well astonish you, but such sophisticated infection mechanisms already exist and have already been demonstrated.

isn't unix:

- everything is a file

Lucent was spun out as the hardware end of the old Bell System; yes they inherited The Labs, but why in Ghu's name they didn't take back the traditional name of WESTERN ELECTRIC still astounds me. And the Sphincter of Innovation (it dilates every so often and something plops out) as a logo - WTF?

you're right vi is the best,

and emacs aint all that.

=)