It's not brand new, but it's the most original game I've ever seen -- you move in a 3D world bouncing off platforms chasing a "spinner".
What's really appealing is that the game is definitely a great stress reliever, very relaxed, with outstanding music (AI generated, which means it rarely repeats itself) based on your moves, and a highly, highly trigonometrical figures assembled on some of the most interesting mathematical curves you can think of...
Reminds me of the 3D Simpsons epizode, where Homer falls into a black hole into the real world:)
NB: I'm not affiliated with the developers in any way, I don't make money off the game and in fact I've never purchased an account on their servers (though I did offer help with their Linux port at one point, but never did anything about it)...
With Plan 9's C compiler (written by Ken Thompson nonetheless) on a 2.66MHz Pentium IV machine I compile a kernel off a local hard drive in 14 seconds (1.4MB size).
Compilation of the _entire_ operating system (roughly equivalent to a "make buildworld" in FreeBSD) takes ~400 seconds on the same machine.
Intel's compiler suite is also said to be very fast in both compilation and binary execution speeds.
Hosted Inferno is great for rapid prototyping of distributed cross-platform applications and the creation of grid-like environments on demand.
This sounds like too much buzzwordism, I know, but take a look at http://www.vitanuova.com/grid/ and, if you have IE, play around with their grid demos. From your web browser!
Now imagine doing the same thing to a cluster of thousands of Inferno CPU machines clustered together, effectively serving as an addition to your environment. And you don't even need to change your OS.
I'm sorry if it looks like I'm preaching here, but this stuff just gets me excited, while being low-key enough that it never gets mentioned on slashdot, so we have only the cool guys interested in it:)
Somebody else mentioned Rob Pike already, pity you can't find any of his older (pre-Plan 9) papers online anymore: "The Hideous Name" and "Cat -v Considered Harmful":
R. Pike, P. Weinberger, "The Hideous Name" USENIX Summer 1985, pp 563-568.
and an abstract of the other: http://gaul.org/files/cat_-v_considered_harmful.ht ml
As for history repeating itself, let me quote Ron Minnich:
You want to make your way in the CS field? Simple. Calculate rough time of amnesia (hell, 10 years is plenty, probably 10 months is plenty), go to the dusty archives, dig out something fun, and go for it. It's worked for many people, and it can work for you.
> What's Plan 9 get me that's particularly > addtractive in this form factor?
the ability to share _exactly_the_same_ environment you have at home, at work and wherever else you may think of.
it's what grid computing dreams of, and Plan 9 delivers:) I've seen people use IPAQs to stream mp3's from a centralized Plan 9 server all over the university campus and even in town.
poor Plan 9 web server, you're giving it the run of its life...
well, the people at Bell Labs aren't stupid -- they've automagically turned off the web page in question, as soon as they saw the transfer to it peaking...
I've seen the Plaid Tongued Devils at least a dozen of times in Calgary and Saskatoon -- nothing boils my Eastern European blood better than them.
We used to get together -- Bosnians, Serbians, Croatians, Macedonians, Bulgarians, Romanians, whatever else you can think of from the Balkan Peninsula, in Lydia's in S'toon every time they had a concert and just get right pissed...
I quit smoking after one of their concerts -- was so hung over the next day I had to celebrate it somehow!
8.5 also hasn't been used ca. 1995. The replacement is called Rio. You can see many screenshots here.
Simplicity is key with this environment -- Rio's code base is ~7000 lines of C code, it is created (and optimized) with zero-copy of images for remote displays and other optimizations.
Because of the 'everything is a file' paradigm in Plan 9 every graphical program views the system as if it was running on the 'root' window in X. This kicks ass so much that it's unbelievably easy to program for.
To have remote viewing all that is required is to import and bind your/dev/draw/dev/mouse and/dev/cons over/dev in the remote system and just start the graphical program you desire.
It's quite neat, and it boils down to this: it was created by programmers for programmers. In terms of simplicity, clarity, generality and usability it is the Best Damn Environment you can get:) I admit I'm partial.
Plan 9 had it 14 years ago. Importing something and using it as your own is a consequence of its design -- everything is a file, so everything could be shared -- not a special hack like in QNX. That means I can let people import my mailbox so they can send mail to me on the 9grid or I can import somebody's IRC file system on my machine.
And it really means _everything_, not only devices. Check out this MPI implementation using remotely served and imported _pipes_:
pity they can't have private namespaces
on
FreeBSD Jails
·
· Score: 3, Informative
we have them in Plan 9. and they've been there for the past 14 years -- each user, each process, each device exists in its own namespace and views the system differently.
my / != your/
after years and years of trying maybe it's time you guys really do something about it -- jails are a temporary solution, and not a very good one at that.
you need full private namespaces for the same reason you need local variables in your programs -- it's just too nasty otherwise.
i -- a browser attempt by Howard Trickey done sometime around 1996. you can view slightly less complex pages without crashing with probability of around 50%. i know of at least one masochist that uses it regularly.
charon -- the browser packaged with VitaNuova's Inferno operating system which runs native atop Plan 9 (among other OS's). this is your best bet if you want to stick to using Plan 9 only.
Everything else the runs under UNIX/Windows (see Opera lurking in the background?). you only need to have a machine to run VNC on.
links -- two people have started a port of this graphical browser to Plan 9, one may succeed, who knows:)
as for mozilla, there is a slight problem with porting it to Plan 9 -- the browser sources are twice the size of the entire Plan 9 operating system (including the PostScript viewer).
9p is a protocol. the file systems in Plan 9 are venti and fossil
9p in itself is worthy of including in the linux kernel, if only the guys there would do it right (their track record isn't too good with Plan 9 things).
Problem 1: What is it good for? Right now Plan 9 has no compelling applications and a dearth of the applications most people use daily. This might be fixed soon as people port things like OpenOffice to it, but don't hold your breath.
Problem 2: It is a research tool, and may never be more than that. Chances are, any truly compelling features in Plan 9 will soon find their way into Linux and even MS Windows.
Judging by how hard it is to bring Private Namespaces to Linux I can tell you that some of Plan 9's concepts will never make it back to UNIX. Some things in UNIX' design are just too hard to fix -- that's why Bell-Labs started this radical new OS (14 years ago).
Problem 3: Overcoming the installed base. It took Linux nearly ten years to achieve name recognition, and it still is running a distant third on the desktop. What does Plan 9 offer that would make me, or you, want to spend time installing and learning it? Especially considerint Problem 2 and Problem 1.
Plan 9 does not want to be a desktop OS but a research one. Its goal is not to crush Microsoft, it simply wants to fix the problems that cannot be easily fixed in UNIX today.
Problem 4: Wrong direction. In my opinion the real important projects right now are ones that are removing the distinctions between OSs. Cross platform tools like Python, Chandler, Mono and Mozilla. Using standards-based DHTML as the UI. Why add another platform to the mix when the real goal is to become platform agnostic?
to quote: "That's the good thing about standards -- there's so many to choose from"...
Slashdot Mirror
It's not brand new, but it's the most original game I've ever seen -- you move in a 3D world bouncing off platforms chasing a "spinner".
:)
What's really appealing is that the game is definitely a great stress reliever, very relaxed, with outstanding music (AI generated, which means it rarely repeats itself) based on your moves, and a highly, highly trigonometrical figures assembled on some of the most interesting mathematical curves you can think of...
Reminds me of the 3D Simpsons epizode, where Homer falls into a black hole into the real world
See it at tqworld.com.
NB: I'm not affiliated with the developers in any way, I don't make money off the game and in fact I've never purchased an account on their servers (though I did offer help with their Linux port at one point, but never did anything about it)...
Change the compiler, not the hardware.
With Plan 9's C compiler (written by Ken Thompson nonetheless) on a 2.66MHz Pentium IV machine I compile a kernel off a local hard drive in 14 seconds (1.4MB size).
Compilation of the _entire_ operating system (roughly equivalent to a "make buildworld" in FreeBSD) takes ~400 seconds on the same machine.
Intel's compiler suite is also said to be very fast in both compilation and binary execution speeds.
If you're running Plan 9 on them -- no. Not for another couple of years at least.
Hosted Inferno is great for rapid prototyping of distributed cross-platform applications and the creation of grid-like environments on demand.
:)
This sounds like too much buzzwordism, I know, but take a look at http://www.vitanuova.com/grid/ and, if you have IE, play around with their grid demos. From your web browser!
Now imagine doing the same thing to a cluster of thousands of Inferno CPU machines clustered together, effectively serving as an addition to your environment. And you don't even need to change your OS.
I'm sorry if it looks like I'm preaching here, but this stuff just gets me excited, while being low-key enough that it never gets mentioned on slashdot, so we have only the cool guys interested in it
Later surpassed by "Plan 9 from Bell-Labs", which distills the ideas from UNIX and improves in many areas it lacked:
t ml
Plan 9 from Bell-Labs
Somebody else mentioned Rob Pike already, pity you can't find any of his older (pre-Plan 9) papers online anymore: "The Hideous Name" and "Cat -v Considered Harmful":
R. Pike, P. Weinberger, "The Hideous Name" USENIX Summer 1985, pp 563-568.
and an abstract of the other: http://gaul.org/files/cat_-v_considered_harmful.h
As for history repeating itself, let me quote Ron Minnich:
You want to make your way in the CS field? Simple. Calculate rough time of amnesia (hell, 10 years is plenty, probably 10 months is plenty), go to the dusty archives, dig out something fun, and go for it. It's worked for many people, and it can work for you.
> What's Plan 9 get me that's particularly
:) I've seen people use IPAQs to stream mp3's from a centralized Plan 9 server all over the university campus and even in town.
> addtractive in this form factor?
the ability to share _exactly_the_same_ environment you have at home, at work and wherever else you may think of.
it's what grid computing dreams of, and Plan 9 delivers
poor Plan 9 web server, you're giving it the run of its life...
:)
:P
well, the people at Bell Labs aren't stupid -- they've automagically turned off the web page in question, as soon as they saw the transfer to it peaking...
notice, however, that neither the network connection nor the web servers are saturated: stuff like http://plan9.bell-labs.com/plan9dist and http://cm.bell-labs.com/plan9dist works just fine
gotta lova plan 9
this one is even smaller, and has no moving parts:
r /
http://pages.cpsc.ucalgary.ca/~mirtchov/p9/cluste
the laptop is used as a file- and authentication server (frontend to the cluster).
there's virtually no limit to how much it can grow (using Plan 9 as the underlying OS is key here).
also note the cute switch.
at USENIX this year this baby stole the show at the LinuxBIOS and Plan 9 BOFs.
I've seen the Plaid Tongued Devils at least a dozen of times in Calgary and Saskatoon -- nothing boils my Eastern European blood better than them.
We used to get together -- Bosnians, Serbians, Croatians, Macedonians, Bulgarians, Romanians, whatever else you can think of from the Balkan Peninsula, in Lydia's in S'toon every time they had a concert and just get right pissed...
I quit smoking after one of their concerts -- was so hung over the next day I had to celebrate it somehow!
Ahh, good times being an undergrad!
8.5 also hasn't been used ca. 1995. The replacement is called Rio. You can see many screenshots here.
/dev/draw /dev/mouse and /dev/cons over /dev in the remote system and just start the graphical program you desire.
:) I admit I'm partial.
Simplicity is key with this environment -- Rio's code base is ~7000 lines of C code, it is created (and optimized) with zero-copy of images for remote displays and other optimizations.
Because of the 'everything is a file' paradigm in Plan 9 every graphical program views the system as if it was running on the 'root' window in X. This kicks ass so much that it's unbelievably easy to program for.
To have remote viewing all that is required is to import and bind your
It's quite neat, and it boils down to this: it was created by programmers for programmers. In terms of simplicity, clarity, generality and usability it is the Best Damn Environment you can get
Pink at LANL has the following:
:)
1024 nodes
2048 cpus
1024 power cables
1024 Myrinet network cards
2048 fiber cables (8.8 miles)
3072 Myrinet switch ports
4096 sticks of RAM (2 Terabytes)
7168 fans
1 hard drive
1 CDROM drive
Not only do they have pictures of its assembly, they have movies.
Check the web page for more stats and better quality movies.
Oh, yes, it's unclassified
Plan 9 had it 14 years ago. Importing something and using it as your own is a consequence of its design -- everything is a file, so everything could be shared -- not a special hack like in QNX. That means I can let people import my mailbox so they can send mail to me on the 9grid or I can import somebody's IRC file system on my machine.
And it really means _everything_, not only devices. Check out this MPI implementation using remotely served and imported _pipes_:
message passing for Plan 9
amen to that!
/net /net
one hasn't truly lived until they've done an:
import somewhere.far.away
we have them in Plan 9. and they've been there for the past 14 years -- each user, each process, each device exists in its own namespace and views the system differently.
/
my / != your
after years and years of trying maybe it's time you guys really do something about it -- jails are a temporary solution, and not a very good one at that.
you need full private namespaces for the same reason you need local variables in your programs -- it's just too nasty otherwise.
irc.freenode.net #plan9 (the former openprojects network)
i -- a browser attempt by Howard Trickey done sometime around 1996. you can view slightly less complex pages without crashing with probability of around 50%. i know of at least one masochist that uses it regularly.
:)
charon -- the browser packaged with VitaNuova's Inferno operating system which runs native atop Plan 9 (among other OS's). this is your best bet if you want to stick to using Plan 9 only.
Everything else the runs under UNIX/Windows (see Opera lurking in the background?). you only need to have a machine to run VNC on.
links -- two people have started a port of this graphical browser to Plan 9, one may succeed, who knows
as for mozilla, there is a slight problem with porting it to Plan 9 -- the browser sources are twice the size of the entire Plan 9 operating system (including the PostScript viewer).
Plan [sic] 9 rules. Everything else is not already dead, but is starting to smell bad.
Ohh, don't you just wish the freebsd's would switch to the Plan 9 C compiler?
Then GCC wouldn't be as importand as ever, and people wouldn't be stuck modifying their operating system around its bugs...
Sure you can write in elvish in Plan 9, I'm glad you asked. After all, those are the people who brought you UTF-8!
Screenshot here!
bullshit. the license has changed, go read it.
enough rms-crap -- enough ideas have gotten into Linux from Plan 9 already even before Plan 9 was open source.
9p is a protocol. the file systems in Plan 9 are venti and fossil
9p in itself is worthy of including in the linux kernel, if only the guys there would do it right (their track record isn't too good with Plan 9 things).
More about 9p dould be found in section 5 of the man pages
Think BSD.
their new license is BSD-like, with a few 'don't sue us or the contributors' clauses sprinkled about.
Problem 1: What is it good for? Right now Plan 9 has no compelling applications and a dearth of the applications most people use daily. This might be fixed soon as people port things like OpenOffice to it, but don't hold your breath.
it's good for research. an antidote to Systems Software Research is Irrelevant.
Problem 2: It is a research tool, and may never be more than that. Chances are, any truly compelling features in Plan 9 will soon find their way into Linux and even MS Windows.
Judging by how hard it is to bring Private Namespaces to Linux I can tell you that some of Plan 9's concepts will never make it back to UNIX. Some things in UNIX' design are just too hard to fix -- that's why Bell-Labs started this radical new OS (14 years ago).
Problem 3: Overcoming the installed base. It took Linux nearly ten years to achieve name recognition, and it still is running a distant third on the desktop. What does Plan 9 offer that would make me, or you, want to spend time installing and learning it? Especially considerint Problem 2 and Problem 1.
Plan 9 does not want to be a desktop OS but a research one. Its goal is not to crush Microsoft, it simply wants to fix the problems that cannot be easily fixed in UNIX today.
Problem 4: Wrong direction. In my opinion the real important projects right now are ones that are removing the distinctions between OSs. Cross platform tools like Python, Chandler, Mono and Mozilla. Using standards-based DHTML as the UI. Why add another platform to the mix when the real goal is to become platform agnostic?
to quote: "That's the good thing about standards -- there's so many to choose from"...
Plan 9 is not UNIX and doesn't want to be associated with it.
Micro vs macro kernel wars were held in the early nineties. Nobody won, macrokernels came ahead slightly.
Plan 9 has not been tested for scalability.