OSNews: http://www.osnews.com/story/20588/Glendix_Bringing_the_Beauty_of_Plan_9_to_Linux Exploring the Future of Computing en-us Copyright 2001-2009, David Adams adam+nospam@osnews.com Mon, 09 Nov 2009 03:50:44 GMT http://www.osnews.com/images/osnews.gif OSNews.com http://www.osnews.com Pointless? http://osnews.com/thread?338452 http://osnews.com/thread?338452 The truth is, many people has been working into bringing Plan9 ideas to Linux. There's 9P protocol support, FUSE can be used to implement userspace filesystems and there has been a lot of work into making possible per-user FS namespaces. Sure, it's not so "pure" as Plan9, but the features are there.

IOW: it may not be worth to release a "Plan 9 Linux distro" - just work with the regular Linux distros to implement and use Plan9 features. Wed, 26 Nov 2008 22:54:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (diegocg) Comments Nice name choice http://osnews.com/thread?338453 http://osnews.com/thread?338453 "Plan 9 from Outer Space" was a movie made by Edward D. Wood, Jr. "Glen or Glenda" is another movie by the same director. Thus - Glendix. ;) Wed, 26 Nov 2008 22:56:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (cypress) Comments RE: Nice name choice http://osnews.com/thread?338454 http://osnews.com/thread?338454 Glenda, the bunny, is the Plan 9 mascot. Like Tux the penguin is for Linux:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glenda,_the_Plan_9_Bunny

And Glenda's supercomputing cluster at IBM:

http://tinyurl.com/2bz6mfEdited 2008-11-26 23:10 UTC Wed, 26 Nov 2008 23:01:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (sbergman27) Comments RE: Pointless? http://osnews.com/thread?338455 http://osnews.com/thread?338455 consider this the proving grounds for such tools on Linux. Wed, 26 Nov 2008 23:13:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (modmans2ndcoming) Comments Comment by moleskine http://osnews.com/thread?338456 http://osnews.com/thread?338456 Linux reviews 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 words and adding the prefix "new and improved" to any old name doesn't make today's review different from the last review.

That said, welcome to Glendix! The more the merrier, the website looks lovely and besides, I like the mascot.Edited 2008-11-27 00:06 UTC Thu, 27 Nov 2008 00:04:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (moleskine) Comments Distribution http://osnews.com/thread?338457 http://osnews.com/thread?338457 Distribution is still spot on. Thu, 27 Nov 2008 00:24:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Tias) Comments Plan9 brought us http://osnews.com/thread?338460 http://osnews.com/thread?338460 the power and glory of UTF-8, and BeOS brought it to the desktop.
Hallowed is Plan9! Thu, 27 Nov 2008 01:32:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (mmu_man) Comments RE[2]: Nice name choice http://osnews.com/thread?338464 http://osnews.com/thread?338464
And Glenda's supercomputing cluster at IBM:

http://tinyurl.com/2bz6mf


That looks photoshopped. I can tell from the pixels, having seen quite a few in my time. Thu, 27 Nov 2008 02:20:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (grfgguvf) Comments Not 9wm, please http://osnews.com/thread?338465 http://osnews.com/thread?338465 As as the long default WM isn't 9wm; it has to be the most cumbersome WM ever devised. Ugly. Your cursor is taken over until you manually draw a new window on the screen. No. Just no. Thu, 27 Nov 2008 02:20:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (twm_bucket) Comments RE[3]: Nice name choice http://osnews.com/thread?338466 http://osnews.com/thread?338466
That looks photoshopped.

Possibly. But the port is real. More information on the port to BlueGene/L hardware is here:

http://tinyurl.com/5d83r3Edited 2008-11-27 03:04 UTC Thu, 27 Nov 2008 02:47:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (sbergman27) Comments Bringing the FUD of Plan9 to Linux? http://osnews.com/thread?338469 http://osnews.com/thread?338469 Section 2.1 of the comprehensive project report strains credibility a bit:

http://glendix.org/report.pdf

I'm not a huge fan of GNU, and always like to see alternatives. But I think I'd like to see some proof of the assertions made. Thu, 27 Nov 2008 04:04:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (sbergman27) Comments RE: Nice name choice http://osnews.com/thread?338471 http://osnews.com/thread?338471 Why you know this is beyond me. ;) Thu, 27 Nov 2008 04:47:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (areimann) Comments RE[3]: Nice name choice http://osnews.com/thread?338473 http://osnews.com/thread?338473 Ummm... No, not photoshopped. Plan 9 on BlueGene was reported on Slashdot a while ago:

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/06/19/1215253

Plan 9 isn't some fly-by-night OS. It was written at Bell Labs as the experimental successor to UNIX. A number of features incorporated into UNIX have come from it /proc, devfs, and the Unicode to name a few.

Obligatory wikipedia mention:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plan_9_from_Bell_Labs

The authors are the same guys who originally took part in writing UNIX. It goes without saying that they know what they're doing.

It doesn't have to be Linux to run on a supercomputing cluster. ;)

GC Thu, 27 Nov 2008 05:38:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (heron) Comments RE[3]: Nice name choice http://osnews.com/thread?338475 http://osnews.com/thread?338475
That looks photoshopped. I can tell from the pixels, having seen quite a few in my time.


Yeah, I've seen quite a few pixels in my time too. Oh hot damn, there's another one.

</smartass> Thu, 27 Nov 2008 06:11:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (shaunm) Comments Userspace, distribution, ain't that... http://osnews.com/thread?338477 http://osnews.com/thread?338477 ...Minix in facts ? It sounds like it is a micro-kernel mockup, yet with the Linux spices to brand all of this with the -Nix suffix. Hey, waddaminute, Minix DO ends with -Nix also ! So what's really new ?

Kochise Thu, 27 Nov 2008 07:24:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Kochise) Comments Glenda http://osnews.com/thread?338479 http://osnews.com/thread?338479 Btw, is it me or the Raving Rabbits look suspiciously Glenda like ? Thu, 27 Nov 2008 07:47:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (mmu_man) Comments Two Linux Kernel based OS's in as many weeks..... http://osnews.com/thread?338480 http://osnews.com/thread?338480 .....both without the GNU cruft.

AnubisOS and now Glendix, who cares about the state of the global economy? Exciting times are ahead! ;)

http://anubis-os.org http://arix.sf.net Thu, 27 Nov 2008 07:55:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (AbuHassan) Comments RE[4]: Nice name choice http://osnews.com/thread?338481 http://osnews.com/thread?338481
Ummm... No, not photoshopped.

It isn't? Certainly does look shopped.

Plan 9 on BlueGene was reported on Slashdot a while ago:

And as we know everything posted Slashdot is truth!

Plan 9 isn't some fly-by-night OS. It was written at Bell Labs as the experimental successor to UNIX. A number of features incorporated into UNIX have come from it /proc, devfs, and the Unicode to name a few. Obligatory wikipedia mention


The authors are the same guys who originally took part in writing UNIX. It goes without saying that they know what they're doing.

It doesn't have to be Linux to run on a supercomputing cluster. ;)

Yeah... I have tried Plan 9 a few years ago. They know what they are doing in system design/research, but their aim was not producing a realworld OS. Plan 9 crashes all the time (it's also slow/not optimized and has nonexistent hardware support, but these don't matter on a cluster).

As far as I know there is a Plan 9 cluster run by Ron Minnich and Andrej Mirtchowski at a national laboratory (and it has no bunnies stitched to the racks...), but none at IBM.

GG Thu, 27 Nov 2008 08:47:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (grfgguvf) Comments nice one http://osnews.com/thread?338482 http://osnews.com/thread?338482
doesn't make it different from Ubuntu


Lines like this always remind me of an idiotic remark someone made about Tron after Matrix came out, i.e. that it was the Matrix of the eighties. I don't really care what people compare to Ubuntu or what they compare Ubuntu with, I just never got convinced that Ubuntu is the best there is, thus stating something isn't far from Ubuntu won't place either it below or above it. Thu, 27 Nov 2008 08:55:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (l3v1) Comments LoC http://osnews.com/thread?338491 http://osnews.com/thread?338491 So based on that the GNU has a lot of more lines they should use the plan 9 tools instead? Thu, 27 Nov 2008 13:41:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (pure) Comments RE: nice one http://osnews.com/thread?338492 http://osnews.com/thread?338492 he wasn't talking about that, he was talking about the eight billion Ubuntu "derivative" distributions. Thu, 27 Nov 2008 13:43:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (google_ninja) Comments RE[5]: Nice name choice http://osnews.com/thread?338493 http://osnews.com/thread?338493 What exactly were you running it on? I've never had a problem with Plan 9 crashing at all.

Besides... just because it crashes on your x86 doesn't mean it won't run smoothly elsewhere.

And, no, I didn't say everything that is posted on slashdot is the truth, but the story does seem credible. If you search "Plan 9"+BlueGene on google you'll see that there has been work at IBM on this.

So... you're basing your disbelief on some pixels you think you see? Could you be specific beyond a "feeling" on what is leading you to believe that it is photoshopped? Or is it simply that you don't believe that anything but Linux could do this?

GC Thu, 27 Nov 2008 14:44:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (heron) Comments RE[6]: Nice name choice http://osnews.com/thread?338495 http://osnews.com/thread?338495
Or is it simply that you don't believe that anything but Linux could do this?

Architecturally, Plan 9 is ideal for this use. Built from the ground up as a distributed system, the concept of "processor server" is basic to it (as are display servers, storage servers, print servers, camera servers, etc.), all communicating happily via 9P. As to how well optimized it, and its compiler is for this use, I don't know. According to the Glendix paper, KenCC, written in only 1/17th as many lines of code as gcc, can do everything that gcc can. One could be forgiven for having a few doubts about that, though.Edited 2008-11-27 15:03 UTC Thu, 27 Nov 2008 15:02:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (sbergman27) Comments RE[7]: Nice name choice http://osnews.com/thread?338496 http://osnews.com/thread?338496 Have you ever seen GCC's source code? I can tell you from experience that I have no problems believing that a smaller, better written compiler is possible. There's a decent amount of bloat there. Thu, 27 Nov 2008 15:16:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (heron) Comments RE[2]: nice one http://osnews.com/thread?338497 http://osnews.com/thread?338497 Not to mention Debian derivatives? Thu, 27 Nov 2008 15:23:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (de_wizze) Comments Plan 9 on BG/L is real http://osnews.com/thread?338501 http://osnews.com/thread?338501 Anyone who doesn't believe that IBM really has a BG/L Plan 9 Cluster is clearly uninformed. There are several papers and presentations online that describe the machine specifices and the hurdles encountered when building the machine. They also answer the question "Why not Linux?". The short answer is that Linux has a much longer, slower I/O path than Plan 9.

Here's the original OSNews article:

http://osnews.com/comments/18102Edited 2008-11-27 16:22 UTC Thu, 27 Nov 2008 16:13:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (abraxas) Comments RE[4]: Nice name choice http://osnews.com/thread?338505 http://osnews.com/thread?338505 "That reminds me of someone. You know who I mean... that person, the one who's always standing and walking." Thu, 27 Nov 2008 18:45:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (StephenBeDoper) Comments RE[5]: Nice name choice http://osnews.com/thread?338506 http://osnews.com/thread?338506 If you look really carefully, under a magnifying glass, you can see that each pixel has an Adobe logo in the bottom right corner.

BTW, I did some research, and the photo was, indeed, photoshopped by "Andrey":

http://graverobbers.blogspot.com/2007/04/more-plan-9-on-blue-gene.h...

Not as a hoax, but as an upfront little joke.

Plan 9 on BG/L is real. And I would be very interested in information regarding how useful it is in that capacity.Edited 2008-11-27 19:14 UTC Thu, 27 Nov 2008 19:03:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (sbergman27) Comments RE: Bringing the FUD of Plan9 to Linux? http://osnews.com/thread?338507 http://osnews.com/thread?338507 I would retract that rather overzealous statement if I could! However, the fact remains that GCC *is* rather bloated, even if the Plan 9 C compilers don't offer all the features GCC does. Thu, 27 Nov 2008 19:13:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (anantn) Comments RE[2]: Bringing the FUD of Plan9 to Linux? http://osnews.com/thread?338508 http://osnews.com/thread?338508
I would retract that rather overzealous statement if I could!

A drop in the bucket compared to the overzealous statements I've heard from GNU software fans. ;-)

Anyway, since I have a Plan9 knowledgeable person handy, and haven't been able to find it anywhere else, may I ask what are the current limitations of Fossil? Max file size? Max volume size? 9P gets all the press, but it's really just a wire protocol, like NFS, and not really a filesystem. (Not to belittle 9P. In an OS where *everything* is truly a file, the filesystem wire protocol takes on a whole new significance.)

Also, any comments on where Plan9 or Plan9 ideas have proved useful in the real world. UTF-8... (and powering the bell-labs.com site), of course. Other stuff?Edited 2008-11-27 19:29 UTC Thu, 27 Nov 2008 19:25:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (sbergman27) Comments RE[6]: Nice name choice http://osnews.com/thread?338509 http://osnews.com/thread?338509
If you look really carefully, under a magnifying glass, you can see that each pixel has an Adobe logo in the bottom right corner.


Yes, and even just at a casual glance, the logos appear way too uniform to be anything other than a copy-paste job.

It was the wording of the original "This looks photoshopped because of the pixels" post that I found amusing, not the notion itself. Thu, 27 Nov 2008 19:46:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (StephenBeDoper) Comments RE[3]: Bringing the FUD of Plan9 to Linux? http://osnews.com/thread?338532 http://osnews.com/thread?338532
Anyway, since I have a Plan9 knowledgeable person handy, and haven't been able to find it anywhere else, may I ask what are the current limitations of Fossil? Max file size? Max volume size? 9P gets all the press, but it's really just a wire protocol, like NFS, and not really a filesystem. (Not to belittle 9P. In an OS where *everything* is truly a file, the filesystem wire protocol takes on a whole new significance.)


To be honest I have not found much information about the max file size or the max volume size of Fossil/Venti (Venti is the actual storage server). I did however find a paper referencing Fossil/Venti's abilitiy to hold at least an exabyte of data. I would assume Plan9 has a large storage capacity but the information is slim. Fri, 28 Nov 2008 01:29:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (abraxas) Comments RE[3]: nice one http://osnews.com/thread?338573 http://osnews.com/thread?338573 I never hear Debian mentioned anymore. ;) Fri, 28 Nov 2008 11:10:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Tuishimi) Comments RE[4]: nice one http://osnews.com/thread?338575 http://osnews.com/thread?338575
I never hear Debian mentioned anymore. ;)

Debian is implicit in any mention of the Ubuntu family. In my opinion, Debian's strength and destiny lies with providing a solid foundation for derivative distros. I view Debian Stable as a sort of reference implementation to keep them on track. Fri, 28 Nov 2008 11:16:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (sbergman27) Comments RE[5]: nice one http://osnews.com/thread?338626 http://osnews.com/thread?338626 Implicit to your or me, but Ubuntu is pulling in all kinds of people who don't know anything about Linux, or the history of Ubuntu.

I ran Slack and Debian before Ubuntu was born... both were, and still ARE excellent distributions... but I understand that the success of marketing Ubuntu is also (in a way) success for linux in general.

I know Debian still lives and breaths, I just feel like it is never mentioned anymore... and that makes me sad because it is an excellent package. Fri, 28 Nov 2008 17:34:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Tuishimi) Comments RE[6]: nice one http://osnews.com/thread?338638 http://osnews.com/thread?338638
I know Debian still lives and breaths, I just feel like it is never mentioned anymore... and that makes me sad because...

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=site%3Awww.ubuntu.com+... Edited 2008-11-28 19:12 UTC Fri, 28 Nov 2008 19:10:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (sbergman27) Comments RE[7]: nice one http://osnews.com/thread?338642 http://osnews.com/thread?338642 O.K. You win. Debian is everywhere and is mentioned frequently. There are a lot of Debian articles on OSNews and slashdot and everywhere else too. In fact, now that you mention it, I just turned around and saw the debian symbol in the stucco on my wall. Fri, 28 Nov 2008 19:56:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Tuishimi) Comments