Buckle up, buttercup! Because we're about to get weird here at The Lunduke Journal!
All week -- from June 21st through June 28th -- we're going to be immersing ourselves in, what I consider to be, one of the strangest operating systems out there: Plan 9.
A research system, originally developed at Bell Labs, Plan 9 takes significant inspiration from UNIX (with some of the UNIX creators even having a hand in it)... and turns so much on its head. Plan 9 truly is a unique beast.
As the week progresses, we'll be talking about the history of Plan 9, the ideas, modern experiences of using the system... and generally nerding out about one of the weirdest -- and possibly most under-appreciated -- operating systems out there.
For now, you can get started by grabbing one of a variety of Plan 9 "distributions" -- there are more, but these feel like a good place to start:
- The Plan 9 Foundation
- Inferno - not quite a port or fork of Plan 9... but shares some code and many design ideas.
- 9front - a fork of Plan 9.
- r9 - Plan 9... but rebuilt entirely in Rust.
- 9legacy - Plan 9... but updated with new patches.
And feel free to post your thoughts and experiences on Lunduke.Locals.com. Screenshots, trouble-shooting, successes, your own personal reviews... if you are experimenting with Plan 9 (or one of the various Plan 9 inspired systems), I think we would all love to hear about it!
I'm not going to lie... I've been looking foward to this week for a long, long time. Plan 9 is one of those fabled Operating Systems that feels tremendously important... yet seldom used or talked about. And -- I hate to admit this but -- I've never really spent much time with it, myself!
... Until now.
My hope is that, by the end of this gloriously weird week, we will all be a bit more familiar with Plan 9. And, possibly, be among the utmost Plan 9 experts. Or, at the very least, know a few cool factoids to share at nerd parties.
Because nerd factoids are cool.
Copyright © 2023 by Bryan Lunduke. All rights reserved. The contents of this article are licensed under the terms of The Lunduke Content Usage License.
