Plan 9 Desktop Guide
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Plan 9 Desktop Guide
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Re: Plan 9 Desktop Guide
#2So it is or it is not possible to run X11 on Plan 9 ?
The article says that it runs twm and then later that it is possible to run linux program through an emulation layer.
Re: Plan 9 Desktop Guide
#3So it is or it is not possible to run X11 on Plan 9 ? The article says that it runs twm and then later that it is possible to run linux program through an emulation layer.
It's complicated. The port of X11 that the article talks about is the one that's on the old Bell Labs web site[0], and it never really worked all that well for me.
Linuxemu is something of a research project, and I don't recall it working all that well either.
You can get a Unix-alike (e.g., OpenBSD) running under 9front's vmx(1), and that will get you access to X11, albeit not running natively atop a Plan 9 kernel, which is likely not what you're after.
Re: Plan 9 Desktop Guide
#4A Plan 9 site that actually talks about Inferno as well, there is some hope after all.
Re: Plan 9 Desktop Guide
#5This is by far the most comprehensive Plan 9 walkthrough I've read in the past couple of years.
I've been running a Raspberry Pi as an all-in-one Plan 9 setup for a long while now (as a sort of catch-all minimalist dev environment/console), and the two main showstoppers for me have been:
- The reliance on a three button mouse, which makes it impossible to use Plan 9 on a modern laptop without finagling with modifier keys (no, I don't want to go back to using a mouse, thanks).
- The utter lack of any minimally usable browser (I know, the browser would be larger than the OS, but it is a major issue for any kind of work today).
It is an excellent system to dig into and learn from, but there are many paper cuts when using it daily: SSH/terminals work differently, VNC/Remote Desktop clients are... weird, etc. (rd sort of works, and sort of doesn't, and without it really working I can't even read documentation online unless it's plaintext).
All in all, this is a great thing to see as I hope new things are built atop Plan 9 (when it makes sense), but as a minimal desktop environment I've moved to Openbox + xterm + Firefox, and have been pondering setting up Chromium OS on a beefier Raspberry Pi, since most "consoles" are just web-based these days anyway...
Re: Plan 9 Desktop Guide
#6This is by far the most comprehensive Plan 9 walkthrough I've read in the past couple of years. I've been running a Raspberry Pi as an all-in-one Plan 9 setup for a long while now (as a sort of catch-all minimalist dev environment/console), and the two main showstoppers for me have been: - The reliance on a three button mouse, which makes it impossible to use Plan 9 on a modern laptop without finagling with modifier…
It's probably unfair to compare Plan9 to "modern" operating systems. Why not talk about everything it got right and smart instead of all the things which behave differently than what our expectations set?
Re: Plan 9 Desktop Guide
#7This is by far the most comprehensive Plan 9 walkthrough I've read in the past couple of years. I've been running a Raspberry Pi as an all-in-one Plan 9 setup for a long while now (as a sort of catch-all minimalist dev environment/console), and the two main showstoppers for me have been: - The reliance on a three button mouse, which makes it impossible to use Plan 9 on a modern laptop without finagling with modifier…
It's probably unfair to compare Plan9 to "modern" operating systems. Why not talk about everything it got right and smart instead of all the things which behave differently than what our expectations set?
I'm just pointing out the shortcomings I found. I've been using it and keeping tabs on resources for Plan 9 and Inferno since 2014:
- https://taoofmac.com/space/os/plan9
...so I do know a lot about it in practice. It's just that, also in practice, nearly ten years of tinkering with it have been mesmerising, mostly fun, but not useful enough for my particular use cases. YMMV.
Re: Plan 9 Desktop Guide
#8A Plan 9 site that actually talks about Inferno as well, there is some hope after all.
I've actually found Inferno a lot more interesting than Plan 9. Dis is very, very neat, and I sort of wish we had modern runtimes for it.
Re: Plan 9 Desktop Guide
#9A Plan 9 site that actually talks about Inferno as well, there is some hope after all.
I've actually found Inferno a lot more interesting than Plan 9. Dis is very, very neat, and I sort of wish we had modern runtimes for it.
Same here, another similar endveour around the time was the Amiga reboot attempt as TAO,
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/03/a-history-of-the-ami...
Re: Plan 9 Desktop Guide
#10This is by far the most comprehensive Plan 9 walkthrough I've read in the past couple of years. I've been running a Raspberry Pi as an all-in-one Plan 9 setup for a long while now (as a sort of catch-all minimalist dev environment/console), and the two main showstoppers for me have been: - The reliance on a three button mouse, which makes it impossible to use Plan 9 on a modern laptop without finagling with modifier…
It's probably unfair to compare Plan9 to "modern" operating systems. Why not talk about everything it got right and smart instead of all the things which behave differently than what our expectations set?
I want to answer trying to interpret the GP. For me, I want to be able to tinker with Plan 9. I love everything I have read about it. But I also need a practical environment where this is possible. I would love to be able to do minimal (frugal?) development work on a pi running Plan 9, but the lack of a browser, an editor that feels familiar (at least for a while, until I learn the ropes) and the languages I want to tinker with, it is very hard to get going.