Glendix: Bringing the beauty of Plan 9 to Linux ?

http://glendix.org/ http://www.osnews.com/story/20588/Glendix_Bringing_the_Beauty_of_Plan_9_to_Linux http://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20081201#news

GNU/Linux is a popular free operating system in use today. GNU/Linux strives to be strictly compliant with POSIX standards, and is thus tied down with several requirements and thereby ceases to be innovative as far as operating system design is concerned.

Plan 9 from Bell Labs, on the other hand, was designed to be a from-scratch successor to UNIX. The Plan 9 operating system offers several new features that are both useful and efficient in today’s era of personal computing: synthetic file systems, the “everything is a file” concept, per-process namespaces and a fresh look at graphics and text editors are just a few.

The Plan 9 kernel, however, is relatively new and thus supports only a bare minimum of hardware. That is one of the reasons of its unpopularity. The Linux kernel on the other hand has had years of development behind it, and enjoys the support of several hardware components and developers alike.

This project aims to combine the Plan 9 user-space with the Linux kernel, to offer today’s developer an exciting environment combining the best features of both the worlds. Stay tuned for more updates!

Your thoughts?

Read about this a little while ago. Sounds fascinating.

Plan 9 is fine piece of work. I will be very excited to see a Linux system not relying on GNU.

Of course, at this point I'd be happy as long as it isn't a rebranded Ubuntu clone (I'm thinking "9buntu") with 9wm and 9term. :D

why there shall be a replacement for gnu? - everything shall be gnu (or at least gpl)!

we already have minix. i tried to install plan9 but failed at the lack of hardware support . i would however think that its good if there is many smaller systems that have the opportunity to be distributed under "bsd or minix" license and terms. i believe it would make better small appliances than as example a windows based mobile phone system. i do not think they can make a linux with out gnu at all. the gnu tools is simply too much used overall . gnu is in a way a standard as open source is concerned. at least this is what i think of this when reading troug the first pages on the upper link. in fact i read that unix almost destroyed it self when there was exactly too many unix systems that where not compatible with each other so having too many linux systems that are like as example xandros that has changed some libraries to fit this system for the asus and thus needs special development tools and not the standard gnu gcc compiler and build-essentials i fear is a bad bad bad thing. i worry too much maybe :)

Wasn't Plan9-From-User-Space designed to do this?

Linux distributions come and go by the dozens almost every day, and most of them live and die an unknown, irrelevant life, mostly because no, changing three icons and adding the suffix '-nix' to any random word doesn't make it different from Ubuntu.

Heh.

So what makes plan 9 better than unix?

WaeV said: Heh.

So what makes plan 9 better than unix?

Not better, necessarily, just different. Plan 9 is not UNIX. In my world, different is good, and choice is good, both of which Glendix would offer.

READING MATERIAL:

• About Plan 9
• Plan 9 Papers
• Plan 9 FAQ
• Plan 9 Wiki
• Plan 9 on Wikipedia

How about this phrasing:

In your opinion, where does Plan 9 excel, where does it falter, and how do its differences account for this?

I'd read the material, but i should be doing homework. :|

WaeV said: How about this phrasing:

In your opinion, where does Plan 9 excel, where does it falter, and how do its differences account for this?

This section reflects my own opinion, though it comes straight from the previously linked documentation.

Honestly, the Plan 9 namespace concept (everything is a file), rio (the Plan 9 "window manager"), and acme (an editor and so much more), are the highlights off the top of my head.

When you get the chance, still read the material, it is quite informative, not only about Plan 9, but about history.

The everything is a file concept reminds me of ReiserFS.