Digital Magic

Computer System

To maximize the impact and the change you are about to make you have to get rid of Microsoft Windows perhaps even Mac. There I just pissed off both sides of the majority. No don't get rid of it. But you need to make this jump. Let's be honest. Both operating systems make you stupid. Decades have been spent to make these operating systems so incredibly easy you really don't have to think.

These operating systems are great for videos, and great for gaming. Yes you can be very productive and do what's necessary to satisfy whatever employment you have have at the time, including productivity in your personal environment. You can also always go back them when necessary. But you are about to embark in a new world.

The options for this journey are as follows:

You get to pick the flavor for the following OS's

• 1 . Linux: blue pill
  • Debian, Redhat, Slackware, Suse etc...

• 2 . BSD: Red pill
  • OpenBSD, NetBSD, FreeBSD

Notice the reference to alice in wonderland. Yes I mean it. If you take the blue pill you are taking the slow path. You might not see much of a change in your life beyond the ability to code well. You wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. Perhaps that is enough

If you take the Red pill you are in for a hell of a ride. You nearly just pissed off 3 communities and if you picked OpenBSD you are probably scared of the government and security is top priority. Not a bad choice personally. You have to work a bit harder. But you are clearly on a path to mastery.

There is a third option...

The black pill.

• 3 . Plan9: But I must warn you!!!

This path is not for the sane. It might induce obsessive compusilve disorders. Schizophrenia, aestheticism, delusions.

The frustrations are real but the glory is far greater. The stability and freedom is impressive. The problem with this operating system is it fosters a distrubing level of compulsion where you think and talk about plan9 all the fucking time. Its no joke! I'm serious. Just go back to your stupid Red Pill you lazy fuck.

Sorry I got carried away when I wrote that. I'm prespiring now.

Here is a small intro of what that Plan9 is. For lack of a better word. Its a fringe operating system abandoned by its original creators. Don't get me wrong. They loved it but most went to work for Google after realizing the internet would continue to be what it is today. Before leaving however they made a ports branch with all of the favorite tools to run on other operating systems.

This operating is responsible for a lot of technologies widely used today. Namely Go language, /proc, UTF-8, and Docker, and those are the giants. Passively it inspired single-sign-on solutions.

The original creators of Unix went back into devlopment for the goal to create a modern operating system that would greatly improve Unix and resolve the endless little issues that Linux stumbled upon over the years.

OS Break Down

• Everything is a file concept
• 9p protocol: Distributed OS; The File server, authentication server and CPU server can be independent.
  • Most of the time CPU/Auth are on the same server and FS might exist somewhere else. In AWS it could be another EC2 instance with EBS connected for persistence.
  • 9P is the only protocol the kernel knows and this makes it easier to write filters and other converters to access files on multiple systems.
  • You can nearly import everything. Because the services are files right?
    • You can import audio device on a terminal from a remote system that has the speakers and stream music from a file server somewhere else.

• Private, malleable name spaces (bind, mount)
  • each process has its own name spaces that can be customized at will. Its also the first road block you run into when you draw new terminal and realize the new terminal is not in the same namespace. But you do get used to it over time.

• Editing tools are very differnt.

I think I will stop here. Because the last thing you don't want to hear is that it doesn't really have a web browser. I mean that would be end of story for you. This operating system is radical and different.

Lots of reason for the lack of a browser. It was a different time. The current web does not want to let go of Javsascript Garbage.

Okay so it does have a web browser called mothra and another one called abaco. I mostly use mothra as its the most stable browser out there. I don't believe I have ever experienced a crash. But it doesn't support javascrip and I'm fine with that.

If you really need a web browser then remote VNC into a system that has a web browser or fire up a VM or turn on linux emulation. There are plenty of ways around this.

Netsurf is the latest browser that supports javascript but it does have plenty of limitations. It mostly works.I use it for web development. That's a joke and you should be laughing. But seriously I do.

So what do you do without Safari, Chrome, Mozilla, Firefox etc...This is the real question and the answer is easy. You work. You do the real work. You change the way you compute. You change the way you look at data.

Honestly you get stuff done becuase you won't suffer through endless Ads, click bait and the minutia of the social media trash that currently exists.

He is an additinal article about another person who made the cutover from BSD to Plan9. Enjoy!

How I switched to Plan9

Basic Computers

1. Installation and configuration of new operating system.
2. Navigate through operating system basic Nix Commands
3. Use of editors such as vim, emacs, acme, sam, ed
4. System Administration
5. Learn how to setup services, email, webserver, remote access, transfer data
6. Co-host your server and extend your grid.

more ....

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