Re: [9fans] gsoc2010 + plan9

[ron minnich <rminnich@gmail.com>]

The big thing I'd like to see as a GSOC project, and which I think is
doable, is a first-class set of drivers for the beagle and/or IGEP.

The beagle is cheap and would be a very nice terminal.

It's close on some fronts. We really need video. USB is not there yet.
There are other problems. At the same time, Geoff has done a great job
of giving us a foundation from which we can work.

It's interesting but watching the way things are going, ARM-based
designs are really taking off. I just visited a vendor who told me
they're churning out just one type of CPU at 1M a month and they're
growing.

I think the opportunities for doing good Plan 9 work on ARM are going
to grow quite a bit. It may well prove a better platform for the
future than PCs, which are increasingly closed and esoteric.

But I think the drivers would not be too hard, I've looked at (e.g.)
the U-boot video driver and think it could go into Plan 9 without too
much trouble. I don't see this as a super-hard project and it would
provide us with a nice platform.

ron