Plan 9

Plan 9 is the best thing since sliced bread in the area of operating systems, or so some people think.

Here is a local directory containing the original bunch of papers. Everything in compressed postscript. Quite readable -- contents-wise, that is. For some reason, ghostview doesn't scale the fonts (esp. the spacing) very well, so it looks rather ugly (at least on the Sun in front of my nose; maybe on Your display it looks better). The articles are all fairly short and fairly old; I wonder whether they don't do anything, or if they simply don't have the time to publish?
Anyway; if you want the originals, you can ftp them from AT&T.


(26.03.95) The Plan 9 Mail Archives are not very practical for browsing; better get the whole list in one big lump.
(26.03.95) Plan-9 is supposed to be finalized and out in "production use"; its research-platform successor is dubbed Brazil.
(26.03.95) Plan 9: Related Papers of Interest is just the same list of 01..09.ps, plus a few bits on porting.
(26.03.95) The canonical Plan 9 site is about as sparse as they come.

(16.06.95) Tte Plan 9 Site has much improved. It contains an announcement:

``We're happy to announce a new General release of Plan 9. This edition will be available to anyone, for noncommercial use, under a shrink-wrap license. It can be ordered just like a book, and distribution will begin in July, 1995. We are no longer licensing the earlier version; the new one is much improved.''

``The Plan 9 distribution consists of two books, four 1.4 megabyte floppies, and a CD-ROM. The two books contain the manual pages and a collection of papers describing the system. Click on the cover pages for more information.''

``The four floppies contain a complete bootable Plan 9 system for PCs. This includes the kernel, a window system, Internet support, and programming environments for both the C and Alef languages. The CD-ROM contains kernels, libraries, and executable programs for the Intel 386 (including 486 and Pentium), Sparc, 68020, and Mips architectures and the sources to create them.''

``The cost is $350 plus postage.''

Not exactly cheap, but then, the sources are on the CD. The manuals alone sell for 150$. The 4 floppies can be ftp'd, so PC-users can test out whether their HW supports the installation.


(26.03.95) There is a Plan 9 Research Group at Sidney.
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