
What operating systems the Plan 9 Google guys are using - fogus
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.os.plan9/msg/1fd0d23c9d28b621
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fierarul
Unsurprisingly, OSX or Linux and the old Plan9 text editor.

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bmj
It's worth looking at the entire thread. Both Cox and Pike point out that life
is just easier at work running a well-maintained, supported system (OSX) that
can play nicely with other machines.

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statictype
I can understand going with a Mac if you want better support for the latest
hardware or you need to run some commercial software like Photoshop. But if
you're running a text editor and a compiler and developing unix software, what
advantage is there to using a Mac over a unix box like Linux?

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robin_reala
A Mac _is_ a Unix box. Actually, to be picky it’s more of a Unix box than a
linux machine as of those two only OS X has Unix certification:
<http://www.opengroup.org/openbrand/certificates/1190p.pdf>

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jrockway
But of course, OS X implements many Unix constructs wrong. Renaming a file is
not atomic on OS X / HFS+, for example. (UNIX certification is "did they give
us money", not "does it actually work".)

Also, of course GNU/Linux is not Unix. GNU is Not Unix! (I like GNU a lot
better than Unix, personally. Much more sugary. "rm foo -rf" actually works,
for example.)

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imd
What's that do? Unless you change the order, I'd expect it to delete two
files: foo and -rf. How does the Mac get it wrong? I don't have a Mac at hand.

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kelnos
GNU tools generally allow you to put your options anywhere you please, even
after regular arguments. Whether or not this is a good thing is of course up
for debate, but it certainly can add convenience.

Confusion can occur with some applications (possibly non-GNU ones) for which
option/argument order does matter, or with those where options have different
affects on later/earlier arguments depending on where they are placed.

Note that the parent didn't say the Mac gets it "wrong," just that GNU "rm foo
-rf" works in the sense that it will do what he intends it to do.

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asolove
Researching the sam editor is strangely intriguing. See Rob Pike's description
of the command language:
<http://doc.cat-v.org/bell_labs/sam_lang_tutorial/sam_tut.pdf>

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j_baker
Speaking of which, does anybody know how to get acme/sam working on Ubuntu?
I'd really like to play with it a bit.

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vinutheraj
As mentioned by _yummyfajitas_ you can try

plan9port <http://swtch.com/plan9port> or

9vx <http://swtch.com/9vx>

and try to get _sam_ running on top of your linux box.

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rbanffy
That's quite an overkill ;-)

But cool, nevertheless.

I am a bit ashamed the coolest operating systems on the market today are
either Unix-derived/inspired or a lame rehash of VMS.

There is something wrong with this.

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gvb
It isn't wrong, it is the consequence of a simple principle: "Those who don't
understand UNIX are condemned to reinvent it, poorly." – Henry Spencer

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_philosophy#Quotes>

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rbanffy
But, again, we had Plan 9. It was great and went nowhere. We had Lisp
machines, Smalltalk and Oberon. All of them insanely ahead of their (and
perhaps our) time and insanely cool. I can see we couldn't make anything
better than Unix. What makes me ashamed is that we should be able to do it and
I can't quite grasp why.

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projectileboy
Forgive my ignorance - can anyone elaborate on what sorts of innovations came
from Plan 9, and why it didn't overtake Unix? I'm intrigued, but I don't know
anything about it.

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suraj
Wikipedia (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plan_9_from_Bell_Labs>) article is a
good start. Most notably the /proc filesystem which represents the state of
kernel was lifted straight from Plan 9 into Linux.

As for the success of Plan 9, this quote on wikipedia sums it up -

Plan 9 failed simply because it fell short of being a compelling enough
improvement on Unix to displace its ancestor. Compared to Plan 9, Unix creaks
and clanks and has obvious rust spots, but it gets the job done well enough to
hold its position. There is a lesson here for ambitious system architects: the
most dangerous enemy of a better solution is an existing codebase that is just
good enough.

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elblanco
>the most dangerous enemy of a better solution is an existing codebase that is
just good enough.

These are words of wisdom for anybody that doesn't understand how Windows came
to be the dominant desktop OS.

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pedalpete
What linux breed do most of these engineers use? any ideas? Ubuntu? red hat?
any ideas? I've got a Win7 machine and the rc is about to runout. I'm going to
get a new win laptop, but am thinking of setting up this old one as a linux
box.

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SwellJoe
Seems to be mostly Ubuntu, but I've met quite a few Fedora, CentOS, RHEL, and
other distro users from Google. There is no law about what OS engineers can
use within Google, but they do have their own Ubuntu repository and such setup
for distributing internally developed software and a custom Ubuntu install.
Their server infrastructure, last I heard, was on an old bastardized Fedora
version, but that was a couple of years ago; and it's probably not something
they talk about with much specificity or frequency.

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proee
I'd like to see a survey of what OS people of HN are using. Has someone
submitted this before?

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shamrock
Yup.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=687267>

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prakash
What's _sam_?

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pmarin
It is like ed(1) with a windowing system.

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gchpaco
This is superficially true but I think ignores how usable sam is. The
rationalized command language, the fact that you can see what you're doing,
unlimited undo even across files (even across file I/O), and the ability to go
to the file in question and just type make it a much more satisfying
experience to do large amounts of development with than ed is.

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eru
Yes. Vi is also not too dissimilar to ed, but much more useful. (Also NetHack
is quite similar to Vi, and much more useful and fun in turn.)

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qaexl
Wow, reading about the wikipedia articles on the difference between sam and
acme sounds like the same pattern of arguments of using vi vs. emacs.

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jff
The difference is that we tend not to argue about sam vs. acme. For one, they
both use the sam command language. Most of us (Plan 9 users) seem to use acme,
but there are some long-time sam users around. There's no holy war :)

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mlLK
I wonder how they (or are even required to) test for Windows machines...my
guess is that Microsoft products aren't even in their requirements.

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yarapavan
Summary: OSX, FreeBSD and Linux (in that order)

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htsh
The correct order is Linux, OSX, FreeBSD:

"Rob, Ken, Dave, and I use Macs as our desktop machines, but we're a bit of an
exception. Most Google engineers use Linux machines, and I know of quite a few
ex-Bell Labs people who are happy to be using sam or acme on those machines."

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aerique
That depends on whether you order by quantity or quality :-)

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borism
it would be more interesting to know what kind of systems these guys are
developing nowadays

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huherto
So these guys went from the dream company of the 70s to the dream company of
the 2000s. Lucky bastards!

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nostrademons
That's usually the way it works.

Google also has a bunch of ex-Microsofties (dream company of the 1980s) and
ex-Amazonites (dream company of the 90s).

It pays to get into a dream company as soon as possible, and do cool things
there, because other companies will see those cool things and give you your
pick of jobs.

