[iv_08]

Plan 9 was basically the successor of Unix by the same research group, more modern, taking the ideas of Unix further, a distributed operating system with full network transparency, better shell (actually, rc already replaced the Bourne shell in version 10 Unix) and lots of other goodies such as the plumber. And it served as the "reference implementation" for UTF-8.

[dasil003]

I understand all that. My point was that if you know enough to appreciate Plan 9 then you know enough to take advantage of the *nix ecosystem as it exists today, which is far too mature for Plan 9 to catch up to. We can always dream though...

[D9u]

    lull them into thinking that Plan 9 is Just Another Unix.

From what I read, Plan9 has its own concepts which are not Unix analogues, thereby discounting Unix knowledge due to divergence.

[pjmlp]

And yet, like many cool ideas, the world was not ready for it.

Nowadays it does not matter any longer.