I have an odd fascination with people who manage to use Plan 9 (they strike me as delightfully insane). It feels like I'm going down a Discordian reality tunnel whenever I read things like this.
Some people look for the most exotic art. Some people seek the most unusual foods. Some people want to know exactly what's out there in the universe (enough for humanity to keep chucking probes into deep space, no less). And, some people want to use their computer in a new way. Some of those people even end up deriving practical value from the exercise, but I would hesitate to claim that that's the reason we do it:)
Some people eat aeroplanes. He uses Plan9.
It is the same reason people write programs using lambda calculus or make fundamental physics research instead of engineering. We even get something useful from it from time to time, but that is just a very nice side effect. Or, as Feynman put it: "it's like sex, it may give some practical results, but that is not why we do it".
There's a few BSDs that have 'multimedia and the modern web'
When did wanting to just have fun become shameful?
> We don't read and write poetry because it's cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for.
From the movie Dead Poets' Society. Emphasis mine.
"Defiled OS". That might be a fun adventure on FOSS trolling.
(this is where I'd put some sort of Windows Vista joke)
That said, once you've played around with Plan 9's filesystem ideas, they are IMHO clearly and inarguably correct, and should be adopted.
I don't think that's really true. You can't do the sort of things with namespaces and filesystems that one can do on Plan 9 in e.g. Linux.