Plan 9 FAQ

FAQ (Plan 9 wiki)

FAQ

(we also have lfaq (less frequently asked questions), which has more in it but is less well organized.)

About Plan

What is Plan 9?

What is Inferno?

Why do people use it?

Why don't more people use it?

Is there much of community? Where?

Where can get more information on the system?

Getting Started with Plan

Sounds Interesting. Now What?

Can use this particular application I've got?

Can run KDE/GNOME/fvwm/&c?

Can run Mozilla/Firefox/Opera/&c?

Do need three computers to use Plan 9?

Great, so how do install the thing?

Using Plan

Okay, it's installed. Now what?

So now let's say do want fuller network; how?

Are there public resources to import or play with?

Where can get more software for Plan 9?

Can get Plan account somewhere to play around?

How can help?

Not Using Plan

It's really interesting, but don't have supported hardware. Options?

The ideas sound great, but don't want whole new OS. Options?

How can help, anyway?

About Plan

ABOUT PLAN 9

What is Plan 9?

Plan is (relatively) new computer operating system and associated utilities. It was built by the Computing Science Research Center of Bell Laboratories (now part of Alcatel-Lucent), the same group that developed Unix, C, and C++.

Plan is distributed system, able to make use of different kinds of resources and servers spread across almost any network. It has very low resource requirement compared to most systems, has very consistent, simple design, and performs very well.

What is Inferno?

Inferno is spin-off of Plan using many of the same ideas (and much of the same code). Inferno has several additional benefits; even lighter resource requirements, virtual machine (Dis), new language for concurrent programming (Limbo), and the ability to run as an application on top of an existing Operating System (including Plan 9, Windows, and variety of Unixes).

This FAQ mostly talks about Plan 9, but the ideas largely translate to Inferno. See the last few questions for some Inferno-specific information.

Why do people use it?

The answer to this question varies by user; Plan shows up in lots of different types of applications, making use of different benefits. It is used in embedded systems, where the low overhead is important. It is used in commercial products where the reliability and performance are important. It's used in massive supercomputers where the novel interconnections and low "system noise" are needed. What you get out of it largely depends on what you're looking for from it.

Most frequently, people using Plan seem to focus on the simplicity of the system and the great distribution mechanism. This later idea, in particular, is very central to Plan 9: all resources are represented as normal files (as opposed to Unix, where most things are files, but not all files are "real" files), and the system uses common method to talk to them all (9P, a.k.a. Styx). This, and related points like the fact that the namespace is per-process, affects the organization of the entire system, leading to all sorts of interesting, novel uses. This is the key point to understand in Plan 9, and also the biggest mental jump from Unix or other systems.

Why don't more people use it?

Plan is not Unix (or anything else you're likely familiar with). While the command set is superficially similar, it's most certainly not the same (cat on Unix has dozen or so options; on Plan 9, it has zero). Many people come to Plan expecting unix++ or similar, and are disappointed when they find something much more different than that. Even the development environment is similar but entirely distinct: we use mk, not make; we use C, but the library isn't ANSI and our compilers understand some extensions that aren't in GCC (and not most of the non-standard ones that GCC made up); the default preprocessor is much simpler than ANSI's.

There are also some very specific issues with using Plan as your primary OS, mostly relating to application support. We don't have GUI word processor, spreadsheet program, or popular games. Most notably, we don't have "modern" web browser with CSS and JavaScript support (but see the question about some of those below). Plan does not aim to replace any existing desktop system, and thus using it has higher initial bar than using systems which do try to fill such roll.

Is there much of community? Where?

The Plan community is small but active. The best places to find it are the 9fans mailing list and in #plan9 on Freenode. Several people in both places have been using Plan for decade or more, and the mailing list in particular gets occasional traffic from the original authors.

Where can get more information on the system?

The man pages and papers for the system are available online. The wiki has lot of good information, although the organization is not always as good as it could be.

GETTING STARTED WITH PLAN...

Plan 9 FAQ

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