Subj : My Retro Computing
To   : tenser
From : Oli
Date : Thu Aug 12 2021 09:01:24

tenser wrote (2021-08-10):

 Ol>> Does Plan 9 count as retro? ;)

 t> That's an interesting question.  Very few of us are left
 t> running it, but in many ways, it's _still_ very futuristic
 t> compared to Unix/Linux.

That's true. Linux is still very old-school (apart from systemd and wayland and sound servers and ZFS (which they don't like)).

Using Plan 9 is kind of retrofuturistic ...

 Ol>> And what does Plan 9 network mean?

 t> Plan 9 was designed to be network-centric.  You were kind
 t> of meant to have an auth server, a CPU server, and a file
 t> server, all running on separate machines, and then terminals
 t> that users used.  Users could connect from their terminal
 t> to a CPU server when they needed a little extra computational
 t> power or RAM.

I guess it's time to connect all the old unused Raspis ;).

 t> I wrote about this a few years ago here:
 t> http://pub.gajendra.net/2016/05/plan9part1

Nice. Best introduction to Plan 9 I've ever read.

 t> There's not a lot to do with it unless you're a C programmer.

Have you tried Go on Plan 9?

 t> That said, Richard's Raspberry Pi image is definitely the
 t> way to go with respect to playing around with it.

That's the one I have downloaded, but haven't tried yet.

Until recently I thought Plan 9 development has stopped. Then there was Inferno. And now we have Harvey OS. It's kind of confusing for anyone who is interested in Plan 9, but hasn't followed the development over the years (decades). But I guess this is part of retro computing.

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