9fans archive / 2006 / 06 / 97 /    prev next

From: "David Leimbach" <leimy2k@gma...>
Subject: Re: [9fans] gcc on plan9
Date: Wed, 7 Jun 2006 15:16:13 -0700

On 6/7/06, Lluís Batlle i Rossell <viriketo@gma...> wrote:
> Corey wrote:
> > On Wednesday 07 June 2006 14:25, Rodolfo (kix) wrote:
> >
> >>God save us from QT and GTK ;)
> >>
> >
> >
> > Will god likewise save us from Rio and Acme?
> In fact I use rio in Linux at my job. And by now I don't use Acme
> because I have to deal with veryawfulcode (lots of very bad indentations
> fruit of many tab/spaces/tab/spaces at code changes, functions more than
> 1500 lines long, an unworkable hierarchy of header files...). I agree
> that acme is really pleasant for well-written code. As an example, I
> like surfing plan9's with it. Also my code looks better if it's written
> with acme, but this part is too subjective. :)
>
> Let's wonder why there is plan9port but there is no gcc in plan9.
>

I think a part of the problem is the momentum that linux got, and
people have been fighting with the pains of migrating from windows
(those that try to use linux as a desktop OS).  Many people got
frustrated with Linux and went to Mac OS X.

I don't see Plan 9 as a desktop OS for sure, but thanks to
virtualization technology (which certainly isn't new), I can run Plan
9 on my desktop in it's own VM and use the bits of Plan 9 that I want
or feel that I need.  P9P also helps here.

I'm not sure if we've got any killer apps to bring people to Plan 9 though.

Mac OS X has the "Ooooh Shiny" effect on people.
Linux had uhm... Apache I guess that helped it get off the ground as a
viable alternative to expensive servers.

So the question is really, what does plan 9 do better that people
actually care about?

I usually don't have a good answer for this question.  I'm not sure
saying "support gcc and all our problems are solved" is a good
approach though.

There's gotta be something we can do the Plan 9 way to WOW people
enough to give it a first or even second look.

As for me... I like operating systems, sometimes I wonder why, but I do.