From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 MIME-Version: 1.0 In-Reply-To: <4afaa1a3d0c9691716e1ad437a1c872a@ladd.quanstro.net> References: <4F533D9C-AD08-4FBD-8ADE-4A7B86530380@mit.edu> <4afaa1a3d0c9691716e1ad437a1c872a@ladd.quanstro.net> Date: Thu, 4 Mar 2010 13:13:27 -0800 Message-ID: <13426df11003041313v7a5c423fge791017e7f2f2b49@mail.gmail.com> From: ron minnich To: Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs <9fans@9fans.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Subject: Re: [9fans] gsoc2010 + plan9 Topicbox-Message-UUID: e038ab3a-ead5-11e9-9d60-3106f5b1d025 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