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From: Patrick Kelly <kameo76890@gmail.com>
To: Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs <9fans@9fans.net>
Subject: Re: [9fans] gsoc2010 + plan9
Date: Thu,  4 Mar 2010 16:45:50 -0500	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <1D63FEC6-FA66-47F5-8AE4-0DA257BB009A@gmail.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <13426df11003041313v7a5c423fge791017e7f2f2b49@mail.gmail.com>


On Mar 4, 2010, at 4:13 PM, ron minnich wrote:

> 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.

Thats the thing, drivers are the most needed. Fancy programs won't do
you any good if Plan 9 won't even run on your machine.

> 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.

That's great news. Personally I wish it was the MIPS, but it'll do.

> 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.

I think a broken table would make a better platform than a PC, and it
seems to be getting worse.

It might be worth it to devote a little more effort into non-80x86
platforms. Windows dominates it and won't be moving any time soon, OS
X runs strictly on it, and the GCC is focused almost entirely on it,
Heck most everything run on it.

It certainly seems like there is a slight renewed interest in RISC
machines. Most everyone I know has a laptop, and with the 80x86's
horrid power needs...

Leaning a little towards another platform could turn out to be a good
idea.

> 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
>






  reply	other threads:[~2010-03-04 21:45 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 15+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2010-03-03 23:09 Tim Newsham
2010-03-03 23:40 ` David Leimbach
2010-03-04  1:35   ` Venkatesh Srinivas
2010-03-04 17:39 ` Balwinder S Dheeman
2010-03-04 18:04   ` erik quanstrom
2010-03-05 15:39     ` Balwinder S Dheeman
2010-03-04 18:43   ` Chad Brown
2010-03-04 19:05     ` erik quanstrom
2010-03-04 21:13       ` ron minnich
2010-03-04 21:45         ` Patrick Kelly [this message]
2010-03-05  2:55           ` erik quanstrom
2010-03-05 12:13         ` Georg Lehner
2010-03-05  1:27   ` geoff
2010-03-05  2:25     ` erik quanstrom
2010-03-08 10:57     ` Balwinder S Dheeman

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