Distributions and Operating Systems: Haiku, Plan 9, and EasyOS Reports

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Oct 12, 2024

• HaikuOS ☛ Haiku Activity & Contract Report, September 2024 (ft. packagefs memory usage optimization)

  This report covers hrev58043 through hrev58187.

  We’re now back to development “as usual” after the release of R1/beta5 (though some of the changes in this report did make it in to the release itself.)

• The Dam ☛ Adapting Plan 9's listen to GNU Guix

  Here is a comprehensive adaptation of Plan 9's elegant network service management design to the Linux environment, focusing on the Guix System distribution. The proposed listen utility initiates network services by executing files named after the protocol and port they serve. This approach offers significant advantages over traditional Linux setups: per-user, per-port, and per-program allocation of ports, to be contrasted with the binary privileged/unprivileged model on Linux; enhanced security through process isolation; and network transparency for service scripts. We also detail the development of auxiliary tools and contributions such as a Go-based 9P2000.L FUSE client needed for container isolation, improvement to the p9ufs 9P2000.L server, and a network-transparent implementation of the finger protocol. We straighforwardly achieve a level of simplicity and security that is currently only achievable on Linux with complex configurations or not at all. The paper concludes with reflections on the challenges and limitations encountered in adapting Plan 9's models to the Linux platform, pointing out the inherent difficulties in reconciling Linux's legacy structures with Plan 9's more streamlined and network-native approach.

• Barry Kauler ☛ Finding XBPS to be very frustrating

  The XBPS package manager in Void Linux, and used in QV, is great, except when the database becomes broken. Then, fixing can be inpossible, or so it seems.

  I'm running QV with a deliberately broken package database. This can happen to someone running Void and they haven't updated or synced for a long time. Try and do anything, maybe install a package with 'xbps-install', and get messages with "broken, unresolvable shlib".

• Barry Kauler ☛ APT and DPKG now in EasyOS

  DPKG is a low-level DEB (.deb) package manager, whereas APT is a high-level manager, that knows about repositories and has automatic dependency resolution. Quoting from here:

  APT is at the higher level, taking responsibility for dependency resolution, repository management, and other daily package management related tasks, whereas DPKG is more at the low-level, going ahead to install .deb packages, yet it has finer control but manual handling of dependencies.