That's a little simplistic. The x86 is a lousy architecture, and you're right about the compilers etc. But all those lousy drivers, VGAs, USB floppies, it goes on and on. Are any two the same? I doubt it. That's the horror of PCs, yet is a perhaps unavoidable consequence of the history that made the PC dominant (c.f. the Mac). The PC kernel for Plan 9 is huge because of all the drivers it must have to run on all devices. Sure we could have (and perhaps should have) loadable device drivers, but that is a solution to a problem that shouldn't exist. -rob