28 Apr
2016
28 Apr
'16
8:54 a.m.
On Thu, 4/28/16, Liam Proven <lproven at gmail.com> wrote:
Oh, yes, indeed! I have a Plan 9 VM, and I intend to
try it on my Pi.
But it's had relatively little impact on mainstream Unix.
I would agree, given the qualification "relatively." There are several
things that have made their way from the late research UNIX editions
and Plan 9 to the mainstream UNIX world. The unfortunate part is that
they're little bits and pieces and as a result miss the major advantages
by not bringing in the big picture. For example, the proc file system
that most UNIXs have today was originally in either 9th or 10th edition
and is a central part of the design of Plan 9. The _clone() system call
that now underlies good old fork() in Linux is basically the Plan 9
rfork() call. Several UNIXs are starting to graft in per-process name
spaces. There are also a number of research systems that are bringing
in a lot of Plan 9 influence. The only one whose name comes to
mind at the moment, though, is Akaros.
BLS