> I think this wildly understates it. Much of the good innovations have been poorly hammered into Linux.
FTFY.
> 9p exists.
A hacked up version called 9p200.u and later on, 9p2000.l which comes laden with posix and unix baggage and of course linux baggage in the lase of .l. This is to handle things like symlinks and special device file hacks inherited from Unix.
> /proc was adopted (though that was in UNIX first).
Linux proc is a mess. Plan 9 proc is just that, the interface to running processes. There's no stupid stuff like /proc/cpuinfo. wtf is that doing in there? http://man.postnix.pw/plan_9/3/proc
> One unifying principle of plan9 is that everything is a file. But the (POSIX) file api has a lot of limitations.
Plan 9 is not posix.
> Fuschia, in contrast had some nice ideas about different types of file (blob/object, log, etc).
A file is an array of bytes. Why complicate that simple approach?
> Linux proc is a mess. Plan 9 proc is just that, the interface to running processes. There's no stupid stuff like /proc/cpuinfo. wtf is that doing in there? http://man.postnix.pw/plan_9/3/proc
Do you think Plan 9 /proc would have remained as "clean" over time if it were as popular as Linux?
One thing that seems to be something of an axiom is that popular interfaces become messy over time. The location of /proc/cpuinfo seems to be an individual act of vandalism rather than being due to fundamental differences in underlying philosophy/approach.
> Do you think Plan 9 /proc would have remained as "clean" over time if it were as popular as Linux?
If people are allowed to submit "functionality" patches ad-hoc with little to no scrutiny or thought, then yes, any project will become a mess.
The general approach taken by plan 9 maintainers is to question functionality/feature patches and ask "Who does this benefit?" If the answer is only the submitter or rare edge cases then the patch is rejected. If the patch benefits a large audience, then it is accepted.
But to be fair, Linux is hammered on by large corps who's only goal is to make money by vomiting webshit from Linux servers. They don't care about simplicity, technical details, correctness, or anything like that, so long as it increases their bottom line. From my point of view the Linux I came to love is long dead.
>Do you think Plan 9 /proc would have remained as "clean" over time if it were as popular as Linux?
A lot of the appeal of Plan 9 is that it's not widely used, and so has remained opinionated. It's not a general use operating system. It's a research operating system.
FTFY.
> 9p exists.
A hacked up version called 9p200.u and later on, 9p2000.l which comes laden with posix and unix baggage and of course linux baggage in the lase of .l. This is to handle things like symlinks and special device file hacks inherited from Unix.
> /proc was adopted (though that was in UNIX first).
Linux proc is a mess. Plan 9 proc is just that, the interface to running processes. There's no stupid stuff like /proc/cpuinfo. wtf is that doing in there? http://man.postnix.pw/plan_9/3/proc
> One unifying principle of plan9 is that everything is a file. But the (POSIX) file api has a lot of limitations.
Plan 9 is not posix.
> Fuschia, in contrast had some nice ideas about different types of file (blob/object, log, etc).
A file is an array of bytes. Why complicate that simple approach?