{"slug": "plan-9", "name": "Plan 9", "category": "os", "category_name": "Operating systems and desktop", "description": "", "recommenders": 18, "commenters": 25, "warners": 3, "score": 14.01, "rising": -2.24, "first": "2025-11-05", "latest": "2026-09-28", "why": "Shame we had a cloud ready OS for 35+ years and no one noticed.", "why_is_quote": true, "has_verdict": false, "sentiment": {"recommend": 18, "neutral": 6, "compare": 2, "warn": 3}, "spark": [1, 1, 5, 1, 4, 2, 2, 0, 0, 1, 1, 0], "listed": true, "loved": [], "caveat": "", "short_quote": "Shame we had a cloud ready OS for 35+ years and no one noticed.", "kind": "", "icon": true, "domain": "sdf.org", "github_repo": null, "official_url": "https://9p.io/plan9/", "pricing": "", "aliases": ["Plan 9", "Plan 9 from Bell Labs"], "verdict": null, "praise": [{"label": "", "summary": "", "quotes": [{"id": 798015601, "item_id": 49875975, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49875975", "by": "trashb", "date": "2026-09-28", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "the idea of malleable software is at the core of unix everything is a file and the plan 9 system.", "excerpt": "I agree that the current state of software is quite rigid. There is no room for imperfection and often one opinion is seen as fixed the best. I think the essence of the GPL is trying to solve this issue, the freedoms of that license is focused on keeping software as editable as possible. The idea of malleable software is not new but most \"business/industry\" software is still very rigid. One of the more interesting re", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Malleable software: Restoring user agency in a world of locked-down apps (2025)"}, {"id": 790473952, "item_id": 49404622, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49404622", "by": "MisterTea", "date": "2026-08-22", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Shame we had a cloud ready OS for 35+ years and no one noticed.", "excerpt": "Look at Plan 9's devdraw. https://man.9front.org/3/draw devdraw can be thought of as a 2D rendering engine. You load assets like text, bitmaps and so on then issue draw commands to render them. There is no SSH. Instead you connect to a remote machine and export resources served by your local machine including your keyboard, mouse and display, each of which is a network transparent microservice. The window manager, Ri", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Stop Making TUIs"}, {"id": 789187472, "item_id": 49324217, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49324217", "by": "mikethe", "date": "2026-08-16", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "the two fish in the pond are plan9, and oberon", "excerpt": "I am currently exploring languages, operating systems.. my conclusions so far are that the two fish in the pond are plan9, and oberon. I am also aware of Geoff Collyers criticisms of RISC-V, and the criticisms of oberon of principia-softwarica. But that's about where my knowledge ends. I am also extremely suspicious of any project that makes any use of c++, being familiar with both the art of unix programming, and th", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: A Project Oberon System version running on RISC-V instead of RISC-5"}, {"id": 771198624, "item_id": 48199914, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48199914", "by": "dharmatech", "date": "2026-05-19", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I finally got around to living in plan9", "excerpt": "Hey pjmlp (waves), I know you've been an advocate for OSes and languages that are outside of the mainstream. I finally got around to living in plan9... My experiment, a social network for plan9 written in rc and some awk. https://github.com/dharmatech/9social", "context": "", "use_case": "daily OS", "switched_from": "", "story": "OpenBSD 7.9 Released"}, {"id": 770607136, "item_id": 48162946, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48162946", "by": "wmf", "date": "2026-05-16", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Check out Plan 9 and Mosix.", "excerpt": "Check out Plan 9 and Mosix. They weren't super fast but they worked.", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Clusters become personal (like PCs did)"}]}], "caveats": [{"label": "", "summary": "", "quotes": [{"id": 796023505, "item_id": 49751469, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49751469", "by": "leoc", "date": "2026-09-18", "version": null, "stance": "warn", "quote": "it's also a big problem that even in Plan 9 mount \"outputs\" only files, not processes", "excerpt": "Old comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10774245 repaste: > People seem to have forgotten that when Perl evolved from being a better AWK to the paradigm example of the modern \"scripting language\", Larry Wall explicitly described this as a rejection of the Unix small-tools philosophy. https://web.archive.org/web/20070204053516/http://www.linux-mag.com/id/322/ (\"But Perl was actually much more countercultural ", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Unix Was Right. We Made Linux Too Complicated [video]"}, {"id": 749134112, "item_id": 46820882, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46820882", "by": "nxobject", "date": "2026-01-29", "version": null, "stance": "warn", "quote": "I don't think the Plan 9 team ever figured out how to elegantly implement security/isolation-related primitives", "excerpt": "It's not the most complete lens, but I've always also thought of it as \"lots of servers advertising services through a centralized directory\" (e.g. like NT's Object Manager). But, I don't think the Plan 9 team ever figured out how to elegantly implement security/isolation-related primitives like secret storage with a single general mechanism. Their \"canonical\" way of providing secure authentication relies on a few ad", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "9front OS"}, {"id": 733146272, "item_id": 45821642, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45821642", "by": "sph", "date": "2025-11-05", "version": null, "stance": "warn", "quote": "Plan 9 is never make a come back, sorry to say", "excerpt": "Ha! Your vision is positive, and idealistic. (Plan 9 is never make a come back, sorry to say) My comment was sarcastic, and wishing that we at least tried to move away from UNIX, VT100 and mainframe-style computing; trying something new instead of continuously retreading old ground. Gary Bernhardt said it best: https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/the-birth-and-death-of-javascript", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "State of Terminal Emulators in 2025: The Errant Champions"}]}], "who": [], "tags": [], "use_cases": ["distributed os", "daily os"], "compared": [{"slug": "oberon", "name": "Oberon", "co": 2, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "rio", "name": "Rio", "co": 2, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "9front", "name": "9front", "co": 2, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "unix", "name": "Unix", "co": 2, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}], "makers": [{"id": 787793184, "item_id": 49237074, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49237074", "by": "dharmatech", "date": "2026-08-09", "version": null, "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Booting plan9 with ocaml instead of rc", "excerpt": "Booting plan9 with ocaml instead of rc: https://discuss.ocaml.org/t/booting-plan9-with-ocaml/18429", "context": "", "use_case": "booting Plan 9 with OCaml", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: What are you working on? (August 2026)"}], "threads": [{"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46667675", "title": "What is Plan 9?", "mentions": 5}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49154249", "title": "9front \"This Was Supposed to Be Fun\" Released", "mentions": 2}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49869755", "title": "Malleable software: Restoring user agency in a world of locked-down apps (2025)", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49749231", "title": "Unix Was Right. We Made Linux Too Complicated [video]", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49384210", "title": "Stop Making TUIs", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49342984", "title": "Decentralized Universal Computer", "mentions": 1}], "sentiment_by_month": {"2025-11": {"warn": 1, "recommend": 1, "compare": 1}, "2025-12": {"recommend": 1, "neutral": 1}, "2026-01": {"recommend": 5, "warn": 1}, "2026-02": {"neutral": 2, "recommend": 1}, "2026-03": {"recommend": 4, "neutral": 1}, "2026-04": {"compare": 1, "recommend": 2}, "2026-05": {"recommend": 2}, "2026-06": {}, "2026-07": {}, "2026-08": {"neutral": 2, "recommend": 1}, "2026-09": {"warn": 1, "recommend": 1}, "2026-10": {}}, "versions": [], "version_unnamed": 0, "family_ref": null, "runs_on": null, "lines": [], "quotes": [{"id": 798015601, "item_id": 49875975, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49875975", "by": "trashb", "date": "2026-09-28", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "the idea of malleable software is at the core of unix everything is a file and the plan 9 system.", "excerpt": "I agree that the current state of software is quite rigid. There is no room for imperfection and often one opinion is seen as fixed the best. I think the essence of the GPL is trying to solve this issue, the freedoms of that license is focused on keeping software as editable as possible. The idea of malleable software is not new but most \"business/industry\" software is still very rigid. One of the more interesting re", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Malleable software: Restoring user agency in a world of locked-down apps (2025)"}, {"id": 796023505, "item_id": 49751469, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49751469", "by": "leoc", "date": "2026-09-18", "version": null, "stance": "warn", "quote": "it's also a big problem that even in Plan 9 mount \"outputs\" only files, not processes", "excerpt": "Old comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10774245 repaste: > People seem to have forgotten that when Perl evolved from being a better AWK to the paradigm example of the modern \"scripting language\", Larry Wall explicitly described this as a rejection of the Unix small-tools philosophy. https://web.archive.org/web/20070204053516/http://www.linux-mag.com/id/322/ (\"But Perl was actually much more countercultural ", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Unix Was Right. We Made Linux Too Complicated [video]"}, {"id": 790473952, "item_id": 49404622, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49404622", "by": "MisterTea", "date": "2026-08-22", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Shame we had a cloud ready OS for 35+ years and no one noticed.", "excerpt": "Look at Plan 9's devdraw. https://man.9front.org/3/draw devdraw can be thought of as a 2D rendering engine. You load assets like text, bitmaps and so on then issue draw commands to render them. There is no SSH. Instead you connect to a remote machine and export resources served by your local machine including your keyboard, mouse and display, each of which is a network transparent microservice. The window manager, Ri", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Stop Making TUIs"}, {"id": 789487760, "item_id": 49342985, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49342985", "by": "RIshabh235", "date": "2026-08-18", "version": null, "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I used Plan9 so entering a folder is entering a computer.", "excerpt": "I used Plan9 so entering a folder is entering a computer. root is the universal computer.", "context": "", "use_case": "distributed OS", "switched_from": "", "story": "Decentralized Universal Computer"}, {"id": 789187472, "item_id": 49324217, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49324217", "by": "mikethe", "date": "2026-08-16", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "the two fish in the pond are plan9, and oberon", "excerpt": "I am currently exploring languages, operating systems.. my conclusions so far are that the two fish in the pond are plan9, and oberon. I am also aware of Geoff Collyers criticisms of RISC-V, and the criticisms of oberon of principia-softwarica. But that's about where my knowledge ends. I am also extremely suspicious of any project that makes any use of c++, being familiar with both the art of unix programming, and th", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: A Project Oberon System version running on RISC-V instead of RISC-5"}, {"id": 786611168, "item_id": 49163198, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49163198", "by": "MisterTea", "date": "2026-08-03", "version": null, "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I do know that in Plan9, 'everything is a file' is literally correct", "excerpt": "> I do know that in Plan9, 'everything is a file' is literally correct. Almost correct. There are also shared memory segments via segment(3). You segattach(2) to a segment from a user space process then read/write that memory as a file from a user space process [1]. Drivers can expose memory mapped IO (e.g. PCI cards) using a physical segment and segattach to that from a user space process. The vga(8) program does th", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "9front \"This Was Supposed to Be Fun\" Released"}, {"id": 786492320, "item_id": 49155770, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49155770", "by": "MisterTea", "date": "2026-08-03", "version": null, "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Plan 9 is mostly Rob Pikes idea", "excerpt": "Plan 9 is mostly Rob Pikes idea and did not involve Ritchie heavily. https://doc.cat-v.org/plan_9/1st_edition/designing_plan_9 Recently, Pike commented that he designed Plan 9 so he could build the windowing system he wanted. (edit: oops, link) https://9fans.topicbox.com/groups/9fans/T4fec171fec7e3845-M2aa08b2665722b7fb587bb13/principia-softwarica-fourth-book-on-the-windowing-system-rio", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "9front \"This Was Supposed to Be Fun\" Released"}, {"id": 771198624, "item_id": 48199914, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48199914", "by": "dharmatech", "date": "2026-05-19", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I finally got around to living in plan9", "excerpt": "Hey pjmlp (waves), I know you've been an advocate for OSes and languages that are outside of the mainstream. I finally got around to living in plan9... My experiment, a social network for plan9 written in rc and some awk. https://github.com/dharmatech/9social", "context": "", "use_case": "daily OS", "switched_from": "", "story": "OpenBSD 7.9 Released"}, {"id": 770607136, "item_id": 48162946, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48162946", "by": "wmf", "date": "2026-05-16", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Check out Plan 9 and Mosix.", "excerpt": "Check out Plan 9 and Mosix. They weren't super fast but they worked.", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Clusters become personal (like PCs did)"}, {"id": 769519936, "item_id": 48094996, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48094996", "by": "em-bee", "date": "2026-05-11", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "and plan9", "excerpt": "and plan9 also smalltalk we used oberon in one class in university. i don't remember much unfortunately.", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ratty \u2013 A terminal emulator with inline 3D graphics"}, {"id": 766549600, "item_id": 47909350, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47909350", "by": "cenamus", "date": "2026-04-26", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "take a look at Plan 9", "excerpt": "If you haven't already, take a look at Plan 9, and maybe Rob Pikes talk \"The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: The Unix Legacy\"", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Math Is Hard"}, {"id": 765307344, "item_id": 47831709, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47831709", "by": "dharmatech", "date": "2026-04-20", "version": null, "stance": "neutral", "quote": "here's my workflow for running Plan 9 on Windows", "excerpt": "Their section on Plan 9: https://sdf.org/plan9/ Side note: here's my workflow for running Plan 9 on Windows: https://youtu.be/IzEa2L_Pgw0?si=unM5l2-_i_g-NYKP", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "SDF Public Access Unix System"}, {"id": 764991968, "item_id": 47811998, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47811998", "by": "ButlerianJihad", "date": "2026-04-17", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "plan9 and 9term solved this decades ago, right?", "excerpt": "plan9 and 9term solved this decades ago, right? https://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog/sysadmin/OnTerminalEmulators", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Even \"cat readme.txt\" is not safe"}, {"id": 764105201, "item_id": 47756575, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47756575", "by": "justin66", "date": "2026-04-13", "version": null, "stance": "compare", "quote": "Spotting similarities betwen the appearance of the Oberon System and Plan 9", "excerpt": "This is a really cool thing. Thanks Rochus. The Oberon language and the Oberon System were featured in Byte Magazine several times, most notably in Dick Pountain's articles: https://vintageapple.org/byte/pdf/199103_Byte_Magazine_Vol_16-03_Network_Management.pdf https://vintageapple.org/byte/pdf/199305_Byte_Magazine_Vol_18-06_Pentium.pdf https://vintageapple.org/byte/pdf/199501_Byte_Magazine_Vol_20-01_Small_Office_Big", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: Oberon System 3 runs natively on Raspberry Pi 3 (with ready SD card)"}, {"id": 757788672, "item_id": 47361792, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47361792", "by": "kalterdev", "date": "2026-03-13", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Plan 9 has had this for decades, thanks to Plumber", "excerpt": "Not sure about popularity but Plan 9 has had this for decades, thanks to Plumber [1]. [1]: https://p9f.org/sys/doc/plumb.html", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Hyperlinks in Terminal Emulators"}, {"id": 757209488, "item_id": 47325593, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47325593", "by": "MisterTea", "date": "2026-03-10", "version": null, "stance": "neutral", "quote": "If I ever do anything with it, it will be from Plan 9.", "excerpt": "Honestly, I bought it more for collection than actually using. If I ever do anything with it, it will be from Plan 9. However, searching around there is plenty of documentation on the architecture in addition to a github repo: https://github.com/veos-sxarr-NEC", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Oracle is building yesterday's data centers with tomorrow's debt"}, {"id": 757093504, "item_id": 47318344, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47318344", "by": "varun_ch", "date": "2026-03-09", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "", "excerpt": "there\u2019s something so beautiful about the plan9 aesthetic https://plan9.io/plan9/img/screenshot-small.png Wonder if it\u2019s possible to recreate on any mainstream operating system\u2026", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "ma"}, {"id": 756654658, "item_id": 47290916, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47290916", "by": "mieubrisse", "date": "2026-03-07", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Plan 9 was just too early.", "excerpt": "I'm building an agent orchestrator (plug: https://github.com/mieubrisse/agenc) and asked Claude what prior art exists. It pulled back Plan 9, and I was shocked: this is exactly what we need today, as I'm convinced we need to think about minimizing agent permissions the exact same way companies do. Plan 9 was just too early.", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Filesystems Are Having a Moment"}, {"id": 756234258, "item_id": 47264641, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47264641", "by": "jauntywundrkind", "date": "2026-03-05", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Plan9 is as close as we've gotten to addressing this", "excerpt": "Agreed! Clients and daemons end up relying of fairly heavyweight protocols to chat (dbus, various DB protocols, grpc), and it feels cumbersome, and means leaving the native paradigm of the shell anyways when we drift into these protocols. Its not an agent problem specifically: this is a meta-crisis. There is an ongoing meta-thread about \"the tyranny of the application\", that it contains its process and is bad at shar", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Unix Isn't for Agents"}, {"id": 753004704, "item_id": 47062794, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47062794", "by": "networked", "date": "2026-02-18", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Plan 9 made some really cool design decisions", "excerpt": "(I didn't downvote you.) Plan 9 made some really cool design decisions, and I keep looking for places to use 9P. I also believe that Plan 9, as an artifact of its era, bet too heavily on the mouse and pixel-mapped graphics. Text, character-cell terminal emulation, and SSH won for good reasons. \"GUI > terminal\" is a separate matter from \"Plan 9 > Unix\". In some important ways, even text with hacky escape codes is more", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Terminals should generate the 256-color palette"}, {"id": 750261521, "item_id": 46891345, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46891345", "by": "somat", "date": "2026-02-04", "version": null, "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I am currently back on the plan9 kick, seeing if I can get it to stick this time", "excerpt": "In that regard it's the plan9 of display servers. I love the idea of arcan, I like how as a counter point to waylands \"X went to hard, the display server should be a dynamically linked shared object\" there is one solitary guy doing his own thing saying \"X did not go hard enough we need an even more seamless, recursive solution to move our display between different devices\" and doing amazing work on this problem. But ", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Arcan-A12: Weaving a Different Web"}, {"id": 749746064, "item_id": 46859129, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46859129", "by": "MisterTea", "date": "2026-02-02", "version": null, "stance": "neutral", "quote": "A friend did similar using rc on Plan 9", "excerpt": "A friend did similar using rc on Plan 9: https://shithub.us/rodri/rcfitness/HEAD/info.html", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Valanza \u2013 my Unix way for weight tracking and anlysis"}, {"id": 749134112, "item_id": 46820882, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46820882", "by": "nxobject", "date": "2026-01-29", "version": null, "stance": "warn", "quote": "I don't think the Plan 9 team ever figured out how to elegantly implement security/isolation-related primitives", "excerpt": "It's not the most complete lens, but I've always also thought of it as \"lots of servers advertising services through a centralized directory\" (e.g. like NT's Object Manager). But, I don't think the Plan 9 team ever figured out how to elegantly implement security/isolation-related primitives like secret storage with a single general mechanism. Their \"canonical\" way of providing secure authentication relies on a few ad", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "9front OS"}, {"id": 748281441, "item_id": 46767590, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46767590", "by": "smorrow", "date": "2026-01-26", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "", "excerpt": "Dozer might be the most likely path to that. https://notgull.net/announcing-dozer", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "What is Plan 9?"}, {"id": 746754144, "item_id": 46672134, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46672134", "by": "lizknope", "date": "2026-01-18", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I just think this sounds very elegant", "excerpt": "I just think this sounds very elegant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plan_9_from_Bell_Labs#/net > Plan 9 does not have specialised system calls or ioctls for accessing the networking stack or networking hardware. Instead, the /net file system is used. Network connections are controlled by reading and writing control messages to control files. Sub-directories such as /net/tcp and /net/udp are used as an interface to th", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "What is Plan 9?"}, {"id": 746717344, "item_id": 46669834, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46669834", "by": "__turbobrew__", "date": "2026-01-18", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "", "excerpt": "https://git.9front.org/plan9front/9front/b18221b10c83d81a9eb4d5f896ad02e3b69095f5/commit.html", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "What is Plan 9?"}, {"id": 746707696, "item_id": 46669231, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46669231", "by": "ori_b", "date": "2026-01-18", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Plan 9 is still alive and kicking", "excerpt": "Plan 9 is still alive and kicking -- The next Plan 9 conference will be in Victoria, BC in Canada later this year. https://iwp9.org/ 9front averages several commits a day: https://git.9front.org/plan9front/9front/HEAD/log.html", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "What is Plan 9?"}, {"id": 746687968, "item_id": 46667998, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46667998", "by": "AlexeyBrin", "date": "2026-01-18", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "the Plan 9 dialect has a some niceties not found in standard C", "excerpt": "AFAIK there is no Rust compiler for Plan 9 or 9front. The project is using dialect of C and its own C compiler(s). I doubt adding Rust to the mix will help. For a research OS, C is a nice clean language and the Plan 9 dialect has a some niceties not found in standard C. If you really want Rust, check this https://github.com/r9os/r9 it is Plan 9 reimplemented in Rust (no idea about the project quality): R9 is a reimpl", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "What is Plan 9?"}, {"id": 743151041, "item_id": 46446940, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46446940", "by": "mikethe", "date": "2025-12-31", "version": null, "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I am currently attempting to install plan9/9front/9legacy", "excerpt": "Greetings again.. I have now read more of the book on oberon, and confess that I lost traction. It seems very clear that he is using objects, and my bias against them is very strong. I have heard it said that both oberon and plan9 are beautiful, but completely different. I'd be interested in your take on the two of them, when, if, each of them should be used, and why. I am currently attempting to install plan9/9front", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Oberon et al., vs. Rust"}, {"id": 739934400, "item_id": 46245900, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46245900", "by": "necovek", "date": "2025-12-12", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Plan9 did look interesting too", "excerpt": "It would be funny if I did not run GNU/Linux as a daily driver since 1998: Plan9 did look interesting too, and compared to GNU/Hurd, it was certainly in a better shape. (Even Solaris, *BSDs already started including GNU tools, compilers...)", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Programmers and software developers lost the plot on naming their tools"}, {"id": 737323296, "item_id": 46082706, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46082706", "by": "nyrikki", "date": "2025-11-28", "version": null, "stance": "compare", "quote": "But the OSes you seem to hate so much implemented many of the plan9 ideas", "excerpt": "You seem to have a misunderstanding of what namespaces accomplished on plan9, or that it was extending Unix concepts and assembling them in another way. As someone who actually ran plan9 over 30 years ago I ensure that if you go back and look at it, the namespaces were intended to abstract away the hardware limitations of the time, to build distributed execution contexts of a large assembly of limited resources. And ", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "GitLab discovers widespread NPM supply chain attack"}, {"id": 736780256, "item_id": 46048766, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46048766", "by": "MisterTea", "date": "2025-11-25", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Plan 9 solved the portability problem", "excerpt": "> Where are they coming from? One is in lives in Brazil and I think the other lives in the Middle East. They both have old second hand 32 bit laptops from the 00's. > but you seem to paint it as some kind of affordability frontier... Yes because there are people still using old hardware because they have no choice. Also, whats the problem with supporting old architectures? Plan 9 solved the portability problem and a ", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "APT Rust requirement raises questions"}, {"id": 733146272, "item_id": 45821642, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45821642", "by": "sph", "date": "2025-11-05", "version": null, "stance": "warn", "quote": "Plan 9 is never make a come back, sorry to say", "excerpt": "Ha! Your vision is positive, and idealistic. (Plan 9 is never make a come back, sorry to say) My comment was sarcastic, and wishing that we at least tried to move away from UNIX, VT100 and mainframe-style computing; trying something new instead of continuously retreading old ground. Gary Bernhardt said it best: https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/the-birth-and-death-of-javascript", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "State of Terminal Emulators in 2025: The Errant Champions"}]}