It's purely for my own needs — what worked for Rob Pike's eyes in the '90s doesn't really work for mine when it comes to actually using it every day, so I figured I'd have fun with it while I was changing the colors for the various programs.
For those interested in learning more about Plan 9 and trying it out in a public environment: SDF Public Access UNIX System is hosting their seasonal Plan 9 Boot Camp starting June 20th. Feel free to drop into com and say hello!
Oh sure, lots of things are "inconvenient" on Plan 9.
Of note for most would-be users: if you rely on a modern web browser like Firefox/Chrome, forget about it. Never going to happen.
It's important to remember that Plan 9 is fundamentally a research operating system; it's not really a "typical" environment by any stretch, and that stems largely from it being entirely network-based and distributed. A single Plan 9 system in isolation can only be so interesting. Using it on a laptop like this can be an entirely different set of problems.
If you'd like some examples of things you may face:
booting can be slow
can be intimidating to set up for some of the more important features – factotum(4) and secstore(1), new users and directories under /, etc.
cwfs is slow
hjfs is really slow
no multi-monitor support
only recently did we get a filesystem that specifically aims to be crash-safe
poor documentation, though it's been getting better
reading research papers is basically a requirement for understanding the system
security is not a priority
For me, though? I genuinely don't need much more than what's available in the base system.
Thats super freaking cool!!!
I didnt know what plan 9 was until i read the comments and then went to wikipedia and mannn its super epic.
Like in 2015 theres videos of a guy porting plan 9 on a raspberry pi!!
I have an RPi4 and a 0W that run 9front as diskless terminals thanks to that effort. It works really well!
Richard Miller is one of the OGs; he did the first port of UNIX, and if you look into Plan 9 more you'll see exactly how much of a connection to history it really is.
Plan 9 is a research operating system developed by Bell Labs as a successor to UNIX.
I would suggest starting somewhere like here to get an idea of what it's about, as well as checking out this video from one of 9front's core contributors.