On Monday, September 14, 2026, at 1:12 AM, Devon H. O'Dell wrote: > Virtual terminals and X historically solved this problem decades ago, so I don't know that Plan 9 is unique here. If "video over IP" is fundamental to the goal despite this support, I think it highlights a need for higher-level abstractions. One could consider for example an abstract windowing protocol that implemented only CUJs for a windowing system such that the video events were entirely local but the known state was known on both client and server. Abstracting pixel-level delegation to a local system that can be oblivious to window-level events probably has value, especially given the amount of client-side interaction we have in applications these days. I don't have any Good Ideas on this that are any better than what Plan 9 does with /dev/draw, or what X11 did/does. I'd be happy to talk with people about it. Not really on the same issue now, and I'm not sure if I'm understanding you correctly, but one issue to consider with heavy videos are modern (that's a very broad word) GPUs - if you want to use a modern GPU, you're mostly out of luck not only because of microcode, drivers, and massive libraries needed to program for them, but also because they can only output 1 framebuffer and the only way to circumvent this issue is render multiple framebuffers as one. Although some server videocards today can either be split up or even actually output multiple framebuffers. You still need some way to transmit that framebuffer afterwards somehow. Thankfully, for light video, light compression can be used, which is why even a weak Plan 9 terminal can run so smoothly (plus most program code is ran locally on them nowadays)
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