Firstly, Plan 9 isn't the greatest thing since sliced bread*.
Plan 9 has a number of clever ideas and an unpleasant license (blame the
corporate lawyers).
Some of the clever ideas are:
- everything is a file, pushed this much further than Unix
- per process name space, mount points are per process (very flexible)
- /dev/window, /dev/kbd, /dev/mouse are virtualised like /dev/tty under
linux
- simple small clean network file access protocol (needed since everything
is a file)
Some problems
- (IMNSHO) security model didn't go beyond unix (though per process name
space is better than chroot)
- graphics library didnt handle colour models well (supposedly fixed in an
unreleased version)
- not everything is a file, and some things shouldnt be,
furthermore the boundary, and what to do when its crossed, seems to
be ad-hoc
Of course you can read about it yourself: http://plan9.bell-labs.com/plan9/
I particularly recommend (to this list) the one about the
device/screen/window model (8.5):
http://plan9.bell-labs.com/plan9/doc/8%bd.html
You can also download some floppy disks with a tiny system to test hardware
compatability.
Enjoy !
- JonT
(*) Sliced bread isn't really a good thing - the bread goes stale much
quicker. :-)
