On Sep 2, 2026, at 3:32 PM, [email protected] wrote: > > On Wednesday, September 02, 2026, at 1:19 PM, Bakul Shah wrote: >> What I would love to see is not a rewrite but a rethink and a new take on >> plan9 concepts with a new implementation. Not likely though. > > There are now many fascinating responses to this thread. This is one of > them. My belief is that a comment like this is unlikely to get written by > somebody who doesn't already have, possibly buried deep at the back of their > mind, one or more ideas for what some of the components of this rethink and > new take would be. Those of us who don't blithely dismiss the likelihood of > this actually happening would very much appreciate hearing about some of > these components. I mean, this thread already contains reasonably solid > evidence that a re-write in zig would not be a waste of time. That being the > case, if there is more that could be done, beyond that, to further improve > the system, then the sooner any such ideas start getting talked about, the > better!
Here are some random ideas: - can we combine the simplicity of plan9 and still provide linux/bsd api (but not a step child like ape). - can we integrate object capabilities as a security model (where a file-descr == an ocap & no other way to circumvent security). Note that redox people are making some noises about this as well. - can we further simplify plan9 (but not in the sense of Inferno). - can we replace 9p with a more scalable, efficient protocol - can we further modularize the kernel so that we can mix and match components for specific applications (but not in the sense of kernel loadable modules). - can we provide a unified "virtual machine" composed of a number of compute nodes of various kinds. The idea: to be able to add or remove component nodes without bringing down the VM. - also allow secure sharing of parts of a VM with other VMs. - can we make memory mapping integral (we had a bit of a discussion on this...). - can we structure things such that device driver (resource FS) code can be supervisor or usermode resident with no/little change. - can we structure things so that latency/bandwidth guarantees can be provided for some subsets of apps. - can the system allow dynamic updates (ala Lisp Systems). - can we provide network / architecture transparency where we don't care about latency or throughput. - can we configuration / orchestration / management of zillions of nodes in an easy to understand manner / data language. ------------------------------------------ 9fans: 9fans Permalink: https://9fans.topicbox.com/groups/9fans/Td859d3c6cefc922f-M52d88d8ad7d99f45a380b784 Delivery options: https://9fans.topicbox.com/groups/9fans/subscription
