View and vote on the article here: An overview of Plan9
An overview of Plan9| Category | | | Summary | | You've all heard of Bell Labs, right? They are the guys who invented half of the major innovations that make your computer what it is: transistors, digital computers, UNIX, the C programming language, modems, touch-tone phones, stereo sound, and just abo |
| | Body | First, I'll take you through an overview of the system. Plan9 was made as a replacement for UNIX, which Bell Labs invented. Looking back at UNIX, its inventors found some fundamental flaws in the system architecture. Using their experience, they created Plan9. Not only does it fix many of the problems of UNIX, it adds on functionality that was impossible when UNIX was first created.
The UNIX base was first created and was followed by many add-ons such as: graphics, networking, sound, and mice. These features were never fully integrated into the base, and were just placed over the existing system. Plan9 works with the modern idea of networks by having a large mainframe with various servers, which the client connects to. A user may create their own personal environment, and then have it recreated on each computer they use. The mainframe will hold all of the user's files, but the client computer being used will do all of the work using its own processor. This is advantageous because of the low-cost, high-powered computer that is available now [1].
Everything is a file in Plan9, including resources, regular files, and networks. Also different with Plan9 is the protocol used by the OS. Plan9 uses something called 9P to access the hierarchal file system. Also, along with Plan9 comes a GUI that is built into the system; unlike UNIX, which had the X window system added on later. In my opinion, the window system is a little bit corny. Bell Labs can make a very nice OS, but they don't seem to have the GUI quite perfect yet. But, it still works very nicely. You can see a screen shot at: http://plan9.bell-labs.com/plan9dist/screenshot.html [1].
With Plan9 also comes a few other additions, but there are too many to show right here.
This article has come pretty close to the release of Plan9 version 4. Between versions 3 and 4, there have been many changes. Security has certainly been a concern of Bell Labs, so many changes have been made. However, Plan9 is still lightly used in the computer world, so the average cracker won't know how to break into a Plan9 system. In preparation, there have been many improvements in security. Also, there are some new features dealing with e-mail. There is an anti-spam filter embedded into the e-mail system, so e-mail can be handled in a much better way [2].
I've played around with Plan9 a bit, and I think it has been made quite nicely. Try it out yourself! It won't require much more than an extra computer. You can get Plan9 at <a href=http://plan9.bell-labs.com/plan9dist/download.html> http://plan9.bell-labs.com/plan9dist/download.html[/url]. Plan9 still has some changes to be made, but overall is pretty good. Some of zZine's readers might have a few problems in installing it, but it isn't that hard to use. Plan9 only supports limited hardware because it is still not used much. Play around with it a bit, and e-mail me if you have any comments or questions about Plan9.
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Sources:
[1] http://plan9.bell-labs.com/sys/doc/9.html
[2] http://plan9.bell-labs.com/sys/doc/release4.html
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This article was imported from zZine. (original author: BlackFlag)
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