[ale] Other GPL'd OSen

[Chris Ricker]

On Wed, 23 Jan 2002, Fulton Green wrote:

> So now that I still have access to a CD burner for the next week (which I
> used up to this point to burn various Linux distros and FreeBSD), I'm now
> setting my sights on other interesting operating systems to play around
> with until someone else decides to hire me. Has anyone out there played
> around with any of these systems:
> 
> - Debian GNU/Hurd (microkernel-based, still in development)
> - Plan 9 (developed by Bell Labs as a successor to UNIX)
> - AtheOS (built-in GUI,  written in C and C++)
> - V2 OS (written entirely in x86 assembly code)

I've played with HURD and Plan 9 a little bit.  I install Debian HURD on a 
test machine from time to time; last time I did so was a few months ago, but 
at the time, the "ls" command still seg-faulted the kernel.  From that I 
concluded that it wasn't quite ready for prime-time yet ;-)

I experimented with Plan 9 a little for a few weeks in grad school.  We were
considering using it for some of its distributed computing features, but in
the end wound up going back to Beowulf.  The driver support (or rather, the
lack thereof) and the effort in getting people used to it were the main
reasons we never went further down that road....

If you can get Plan 9 to run on your hardware (supported graphics and NIC 
can be hard to come by), it's worth trying.

later,
chris


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