[9fans] Re: Anyone still running plan9?

[Steve_Kilbane@cegelecproj.co.uk Steve_Kilbane@cegelecproj.co.uk]

> There's an rc port for linux yes. Well, it just run on linux. didn't
> need a port.

Actually, it's a reimplementation, not a port, and the same one
runs on various Unixes, not just Linux.

> 9wm is a clone of 8 1/2,

More correctly, it's an X window manager that presents a similar
look'n'feel to 8½'s GUI, which is only half the story of 8½ (if
that much). It doesn't provide the wondrous filesystem-based
interface that makes 8½ so cool, and it doesn't provide the window
system as a whole, which X does.

I wondered at one point what it would be like to try to kludge a
fifo-based window system onto UNIX, so that there was a process
that scribbled on the screen, serving a pipe to the window system,
which served pipes to its clients...never bothered with it, though.
Too many applications to write, and I couldn't find any believable
docs on how to use Sun's framebuffers. Didn't look that hard, mind.

I *did* bodge a pipe into 9wm (and 9term), though. You could
hide/open/resize/move windows using shell commands, and I got a fair
way along writing a virtual window manager in the es shell. Pretty
bizarre, and testing it convinced me that I didn't actually want
to use it in real life...