I don't know if it's because of bashfulness or what that people aren't
telling it to your face: Plan 9 is not intended for home or home office. It
hasn't matured to that point and its age is already past when it had a
chance to mature. From what I've read on this list it probably serves as
the back-end so some useful SOHO (and embedded?) applications, in addition
to research and probably industrial use, but I don't think it's the
front-end to any. These people who use it--I don't--all are either very
much interested in computer systems or simply students, professors,
researchers, and/or employees in the field.
You can try using Plan 9--I did and was dejected because learning about
computers is for me only a pleasant aside to actual use of computers--but I
don't think you can get much from it by way of productivity, unless you
intend to get productive in software engineering and/or computer science.
--On Tuesday, April 14, 2009 2:05 PM +0800 Jim Habegger
<[email protected]> wrote:
We have three Windows laptops in our family. I've been using free
software systems off and on for years. Last week I learned about Plan
9 from Bell Labs, from someone in a Linux Questions forum. Now I have
it installed on a partition on my laptop, along with XP,
Ubuntu-on-NTFS, Debian, and Slackware. I've learned to access a fat
partition, change the font size, and use Acme. Now I need to learn how
to set up a wireless connection to the family router network, access
my files on my wife's Vista laptop, and browse the Internet.
My wireless card is not listed in Plan9.ini. Does that mean there's no
way for me to connect with that card?
I'd like to learn how much I can use Plan 9 for home office,
multimedia and Internet socializing, then I'd like to experiment with
distributing the system between computers. I've learned about as much
as I can for now from the documentation on the Plan 9 site, except for
how to connect to the network. I'm waiting to find out if it's even
possible.
Now I'm listing /bin, reading man pages, and practicing commands.
After that I might have some questions. Meanwhile, does anyone have
any suggestions about learning to use Plan 9 for home office,
multimedia and Internet socializing, and then to learn more about
networking and distributed systems?
