Quoth Daniel Maslowski via 9fans <[email protected]>: > Hey fans, > > I pick i3/Sway because it fits my needs, and that is where that > discussion ends. Coincidentally, they have strong roots in Plan 9, and they > did this one thing: improve a lot.
It's worth noting -- one of the biggest things that makes rio hang together is difficult to make work well on X11; switching between graphical and text mode in a single window. If running a program didn't just took over the current window, then a good deal of window placement annoyance just melts away. This is a decent part of the essence of plan 9: By opting out of the certain things, and carefully selecting abstractions that carry more load than you might expect, large amounts of complexity may be left behind; the resulting system is different from what one may be used to, and some learning is needed, but it ends up hanging together quite well. > a field that exploded over the years ...Yes, that's an approprate turn of phrase. Step carefully through the rubble, and watch for undetonated ordnance. It feels like modern UIs (not just web UIs) are slow and unpredictable. They try to be helpful, but end up being distracting. Plan 9 UI desing is far from perfect, but at least it's predictable. > And here goes the idea of "simplicity": It isn't simple nor easy to > *develop* those things, but the primitives are simple. On the other hand, > it is the developers' burden to deliver simplicity to the end user. A simple system is one that can be described briefly, with the interactions and their results understood in their entirety. Less code may not mean a simpler system for the end user, but it's correlated. It's possible to understand a simple system, but one can only get used to a complex system. Personally, I prefer understanding. > Let's keep that in mind: Missing out on a decent user experience creates tons > of > complexity on the side of the user. Like, say, having tons of abbreviations > and little use of colors and such in 2025, in which we have 8k screens, > terabytes of storage, gigabytes of RAM, touch input, and tons of gadgets in > everyone's hands - that can change. Other than difficulties with touch input, you've mostly listed upsides. This is why I drive Linux from Plan 9 when I can; I find the UI rather pleasant compared to many contemporary systems. > Part2: Where do I want to go with Plan 9? > > A lightweight system that can run on those many gadgets we now have? > Awesome, let's do that! I see a ton of potential in being able to, say, > drawterm / cpu into the tablet I hung up in my kitchen. The stock Android > is long defunct. Or the wristband I am wearing. Tiny SBCs that I can plug > into my laptop via USB. The small https://racklet.io/ cluster that I am > helping to build. Whatever wicked still may come! Yes, that would be quite nice. > So I have been working on hardware platform initialization firmware, this > project called oreboot (yes, without C), and boot loaders, that is, > LinuxBoot, and next, I want to bring up Plan 9. I mainly work on RISC-V > based platforms, now also a bit of Arm, and little x86. > > With the experience in doing this, I paired up with Shawn to hack on > Moody's WIP port of 9front for RISC-V in QEMU. And I checked with Ron and > Ori if we can LinuxBoot into Plan 9 / 9front on x86 (might work again with > Ron's fix; I gotta retry!). > > Over the last few days, I created a tool to convert Plan 9 a.out files to > ELF (amd64 so far, RISC-V WIP), and I added Plan 9 a.out support for RISC-V > to radare2. Those tools should help with the endeavor. Getting a working risc-v port would definitely be interesting; while there's not much great hardware out there, the situation may be less bad in the future -- and the more ports the merrier as long as we have a good way to test and maintain them. > I would be very happy to see some more support. I can read quite a lot of > code, and I will have questions. Some I can answer myself with more or less > effort, and some which I can only work through with a lot of patience and > help. > > Postlude: > > Anyway, sorry for the very lengthy email. I am not much of an email person > anyway, so please bear with me should you reply and wait for my response. > Thank you! 🧡 > > With all that, have a good day! ------------------------------------------ 9fans: 9fans Permalink: https://9fans.topicbox.com/groups/9fans/Tf84d656c78bbda91-M4b211d9f604426d323652ce9 Delivery options: https://9fans.topicbox.com/groups/9fans/subscription
