I found that the web browser that comes with Inferno, which is a very interesting variant (not a distribution) of Plan9, is quite a bit better than the one found in the "original" Plan9. Inferno is amazing in its own right and is worth having a look at.
Why Plan 9? (2001)
21–30 of 55 posts
Re: Why Plan 9? (2001)
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
Cool, hadn't seen that before. Unfortunately, doesn't seem to be in plan9port.
That's because the OSes on which plan9port runs already have plenty of apps that can emulate a vt100. Your question suggests to me that you still don't get it: nothing in Plan 9 -- not the shell, not the ability to issue command lines and get stdout and stderr back -- depends on vt(1). vt(1) is used only to communicate with (tty drivers on) other OSes, over the network. Just as most of time, a user of OS X has no nee…
Agreed, and I know, so I should have said my use case is more with plan9port which is used with existing Unix applications. Therefore I had the desire to open a special win in acme that would support some level of tty emulation.
Re: Why Plan 9? (2001)
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
Cool, hadn't seen that before. Unfortunately, doesn't seem to be in plan9port.
That's because the OSes on which plan9port runs already have plenty of apps that can emulate a vt100. Your question suggests to me that you still don't get it: nothing in Plan 9 -- not the shell, not the ability to issue command lines and get stdout and stderr back -- depends on vt(1). vt(1) is used only to communicate with (tty drivers on) other OSes, over the network. Just as most of time, a user of OS X has no nee…
And Plan 9 will never have more than 1000 users because it can't get a web browser to deliver a satisfactory experience.
It's a horrible chicken-and-egg thing.
Re: Why Plan 9? (2001)
#24Is there a usable version of plan9 we can install?
9front runs on virtual machine and on hardware just fine.
Re: Why Plan 9? (2001)
#25Incidentally, the Raspberry Pi image was recently updated and has better multi-core support. Pretty nice for a near-instant boot terminal, although the non-UNIXness of it becomes a little bit grating when trying to remember how to SSH in a hurry. (On mobile, so I'll add the link later, but http://taoofmac.com/space/os/Plan9 has my notes)
It's available at http://plan9.bell-labs.com/sources/contrib/miller/ .
Thanks!
Re: Why Plan 9? (2001)
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
Cool, hadn't seen that before. Unfortunately, doesn't seem to be in plan9port.
That's because the OSes on which plan9port runs already have plenty of apps that can emulate a vt100. Your question suggests to me that you still don't get it: nothing in Plan 9 -- not the shell, not the ability to issue command lines and get stdout and stderr back -- depends on vt(1). vt(1) is used only to communicate with (tty drivers on) other OSes, over the network. Just as most of time, a user of OS X has no nee…
[deleted]
Re: Why Plan 9? (2001)
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
More on Raspberry Pi port in case others are interested. Raspberry Pi port is interesting, because it allows us to run plan9 on native hardware (access keyboard, mouse, video and probably audio - haven't checked). It doesn't matter that there isn't much power in it, because plan9 is designed to be distributed. Once you have a terminal, you can set up a cpu server and file server to run under a linux hypervisor in the…
> However, due to the elegance of the plan9 architecture, instead of having the app run in the terminal window or over a laborious x-windows protocol, it writes quickly over the network to the window that you invoked the command from. I don't understand the distinction you are trying to make with the phrsase "quickly over the network". SSH and networked X aren't exactly slow. The latter can be a slug with a bad netwo…
Thanks for the corrections. There are many reasons to dislike X, but sounds like speed isn't one.
Re: Why Plan 9? (2001)
#28Is there a usable version of plan9 we can install?
Couple of options: Raspberry Pi, or virtualisation. 9front say to avoid virtualbox, but it works. Here's a tutorial, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n5XAhsHyqow
http://plan9.bell-labs.com/sources/contrib/miller/9pi.img.gz
Is the image for the Rasperry Pi. Is said to be working with Pi 0/1/2.
Has be a quite frustrating experience for me. I recommend to run it on qemu or virtual box. 9vx is the coolest way to run plan 9 (it's thin virtualisation layer that allows access to the host) but it does not seem to work 9front.
Re: Why Plan 9? (2001)
#29Some may find the plain text version easier to read:
Re: Why Plan 9? (2001)
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
More on Raspberry Pi port in case others are interested. Raspberry Pi port is interesting, because it allows us to run plan9 on native hardware (access keyboard, mouse, video and probably audio - haven't checked). It doesn't matter that there isn't much power in it, because plan9 is designed to be distributed. Once you have a terminal, you can set up a cpu server and file server to run under a linux hypervisor in the…
> However, due to the elegance of the plan9 architecture, instead of having the app run in the terminal window or over a laborious x-windows protocol, it writes quickly over the network to the window that you invoked the command from. I don't understand the distinction you are trying to make with the phrsase "quickly over the network". SSH and networked X aren't exactly slow. The latter can be a slug with a bad netwo…
Oh, God. Are you serious? Listen try sitting in Texas some time and opening a X application even over a compressed SSH link from Delaware. It literally takes minutes for a splash screen to paint. And using applications are nearly impossible due to interaction lag. You're better off using a VMware console, RDP heck even Citrix which at one time was itself supposedly X based.
X is simply awful over the WAN, trust me. Please note: I'm not talking about an essentially text-only experience like xterm, which works fine. I mean actually using X as a graphical client.