after Linux, what? in place of Hurd, Eros, Brazil,...?

[Robert Brockway]

On Sat, 1 Nov 2003 cbbrowne-HInyCGIudOg at public.gmane.org wrote:

> I do not see any of these being the Next Great Thing.

I'm not sure I do either, but I expect some of their concepts to be in the
Next Great Thing...

> - Eros is interesting, but its _proper_ use involves designing embedded
>   systems atop it, things that aren't much "like Unix."  And while it

I have researched Eros a bit and I hadn't got this feeling at all.  It
seems (at least to me) that it is intended as a general purpose OS.

>   has the "Eric Raymond Seal Of Approval" on it, I haven't seen anything
>   more than talk about it.

It can be downloaded but has to be considered beta AFAIK.  They recommend
anyone using it "be on the mailing list".  That isn't bad advice for any
OS of course :)

> - Brazil would be a proprietary Sun thing, and it is by no means evident

>From what I understood Brazil was based at Bell Labs like Plan9 (and UNIX
before it).

I found some doco to back this up:

http://www.fe.up.pt/~jlopes/doc/plan9/faq.html#brazil
http://www.blu.org/meetings/1998/07/description.html
http://www.operating-system.org/betriebssystem/bs-plan9.htm

Ok, that 3rd one isn't in English but the table at the bottom suggests
that Plan9 v3 is codenamed Brazil, hmmm.

I hadn't heard of Brazil being associated with Sun but if you can provide
some links that'd be cool.

>   that Sun will survive to make it more than a curiosity any more than

OT, but I'm pegging Sun to survive as a much smaller company than today.
Might be acquired of course.

> - Plan 9 is a proprietary Bell Labs thing; while interesting things

Plan9 source is certainly available.  How are you defining proprietary?
After some time on the CLIC list I am very careful with this word :)

The Plan9 licence is here:

http://plan9.bell-labs.com/plan9dist/license.html

I just skimmed it but it seemed pretty decent as an OSS licence to me.

>   could be gleaned from it, and have (Alex Viro's filesystem namespaces

The distributed nature of it is interesting.

>   patch, for instance), it has quite clearly failed in becoming of
>   general interest.  They dropped efforts on Plan 9 in favor of Inferno,

I read last week (on a list for old hardware/software frequented by Dennis
Ritchie) a request for support on the development of Plan9.  So it's down
but not out :)

>   which has considerable parallels to JavaOS and Brazil, but that, too,
>   has pretty much fallen to being a curiosity.

I see these as experimental OSes.  I believe that is how they were all
conceived.  If they don't make it big their ideas will (IMHO).

> These systems are now all years old (save perhaps for Brazil), and none
> have the "spark of youth" that would be needed in order for a system to

I think I understand what you're saying but I'm not sure I see that as an
essential requirement (although it may well be desirable).

> suffers from the problem of dependancy on pretty old hardware; these
> systems do too.  The last time I looked at Plan 9, they _refused_ to try
> to support Adaptec SCSI adaptors, which meant I couldn't install it on
> the hardware I had then.  This sort of fragmentary support for hardware
> is quite typical.

Judging by the comment I read last week (above) maybe their attitude has
changed.

> The system I previously pointed at as a more plausible "successor" was
> Dragonfly BSD, which is mostly a spinoff of FreeBSD.  I can't claim that

I've heard of it but haven't investigated it.  I'll certainly look into
it.

>      Hurd and Eros and Brazil are conspicuously steps _away_ from Unix.
>      (Plan 9 isn't; it is intended as "more Unix-like than Unix...")

In concept if not in implementation.  I think some of the fundamental
ideas of Plan9 are quite non-unix but the idea of it being an OS with few
imposed constraints is certainly there.

>  2.  The choice of distributions gets too painful.

I wouldn't be at all surprised if the number of core distributions drops
in the next 5 years (while the user base continues to grow) although a few
fringe distros will remain.

>      Debian has been having considerable pains in trying to release new
>      "stable" releases.

On the one hand they do strive for stability in Stable releases.  I do
agree that the release cycle can be too slow.  To a certain extent this is
a necessary pre-requisite for the stability Debian enjoys.  I know the
Debian release manager personally (in person I mean) and I have tried to
convey to him the feeling among many that the releases could afford to be
quicker.  I suspect many others have as well :)  He has a big job and I
respect him for the hard work he puts in.

> It is by no means implausible that challenges of availability of updates
> of all these sorts may lead people to look for something new.  It _is_ a
> good thing to have the various *BSD systems around; they represent

Definately.

> meaningful "escape routes" for some of the problems that are possible.

Going a step further I don't like the artificial divide of having a Linux
group and a BSD group.  When I founded a free/home unix user group I made
it version indendent for 2 reasons:

1) I have always seen this division as artificial.

2) I wanted the club to survive the demise of any given OS.

> dramatically stupid.  I have long argued that the existence of Debian,
> complete with 'constitution' and 'democratic process,' however
> imperfect, keeps away the reality the more paranoid fantasies people
> have had about Red Hat.)

Definately.  I could envision a situation in which Debian ends up the
vanguard of Linux simply because it is beyond being bought out.

Cheers,
	Rob

-- 
Robert Brockway B.Sc. email: robert-5LEc/6Zm6xCUd8a0hrldnti2O/JbrIOy at public.gmane.org, zzbrock at uqconnect.net
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