-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 on Sun, Oct 21, 2001 at 10:30:57AM -0500, Jim Choate (ravage@einstein.ssz.com) wrote:
On Sun, 21 Oct 2001, Sunder wrote:
Why Plan-9? I'd say go with OpenBSD. :) Built in crypto, built in firewall,
<shrug> You mean there are OS'es that don't?
secure on installation without you needing to tweak stuff.
<shrug> You mean all(!) OS'es don't do this already?
Hell you can even tell it to encrypt swap pages.
<shrug> You mean all OS'es don't allow you to mount individual filesystems through an encryption layer?
- Authored by same Bell-Labs crew that wrote Unix in the first place. Plan 9 was specifically designed to 'fix' the problems of Unix. It of course has its own problems. There is active support by the authors currently.
This says nothing about current development. Word I've heard (from someone tangentially involved with the project) was that the release was something of a desperation move. As someone who watches free software licences closely, the Plan 9 license is one of the more twisted bits of corporate-authored licenses. Not necessarially bad, but it reeks of compromise clauses speaking to internal battles. Rumor was that a codebase that had been stable for a couple of years saw a slew of commits in the weeks leading to the public release.
- Has had many years of production use internal to Bell - Labs.
How about its external use track record?
- Open Source, no license required to build and distribute your own version.
The license is *not* OSI certified, nor is it considered Free Software by the FSF. OSI approved licenses list: http://www.opensource.org/licenses/index.html FSF discussion of Plan 9 License: http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/plan-nine.html
- Fully distributed in both process and file space
Meaning...?
- Has a unique three (3) kernel approach; I/O - Auth, File, Process
- No 'root' user.
This is a plus. There are other systems which provide this, from Guardian GNU/Linux to, IIRC, Jon Shapiro's EROS. EROS shares a number of design similarities with Plan 9, as I understand, though I can't admit to more than a nodding aquaintance with either.
- Supports IPv6 (default), IPv4, and IL (it's customer to Plan 9).
Ditto GNU/Linux.
- Filesystem is fully transitive, everything is treated like a file. This creates some unique opportunities to make publicly shared but privately maintaned resource pools. Hangar 18 is an attempt to do just this.
What does this mean? How does this compare with, say, GNU/Linux and /proc?
- The filesystem is structured and featured in such a way that RDBMS sorts of solutions are moot. These functions are built into the filesystem itself (though not through SQL compliance).
How does this compare with, say, journaled filesystems? I'm not challenging, I don't understand the statement above and am not familiar with the technology.
- Encryption (currently DES, needs fixing) built right in.
Built into what? Filesystems? Networking? How does this differ from a GNU/Linux approach of providing encrypted filesystems and/or FreeSWAN and/or SSH as modules and/or userspace.
- Doesn't use passwords, Instead it uses tickets (ie certificates).
...which are granted via...? Passwords, perhaps?
- Anonymity features with respect to both process and file space are not going to be hard to build in, Pike estimated at one points about 150 lines of rc besides the actual crypto algorithm.
- Global mobile log-in out of the box.
- Has a wickedly new GUI.
Oh, now *that's* compelling....
- Supports Inferno (run-time included) so that you can access one of the leading 'Internet Appliance' work environments. Plan 9 isn't real-time, but Inferno is. (It makes my Lego Mindstorm look like a directory tree, makes programming real-time hardware operations rather easy)
What's Inferno? - -- Karsten M. Self <kmself@ix.netcom.com> http://kmself.home.netcom.com/ What part of "Gestalt" don't you understand? Home of the brave http://gestalt-system.sourceforge.net/ Land of the free Free Dmitry! Boycott Adobe! Repeal the DMCA! http://www.freesklyarov.org Geek for Hire http://kmself.home.netcom.com/resume.html -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.0.6 (GNU/Linux) Comment: For info see http://www.gnupg.org iD8DBQE701BIOEeIn1XyubARAvyKAJ4wL2XEJENSQ96WRcyKkrGxdrWWbwCeI5+1 fw9y+VoX4+Gcprq/0owJ6ms= =7Uoq -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----