[9fans] Re: plan 9 and multiboot

[9fans] Re: plan 9 and multiboot

[Jim Choate]

Thanks to everyone for all the info. I'll pass it along.

I have this to say as to my view about single OS use. It certainly isn't
the norm for me. I'm a practicing engineer and between work and home I
switch between about 20 OS'es every day.

I'd say that if you find everything you need in a single OS then you
aren't pushing the envelope very hard. Whether you like it or not the
ability to co-exist with other OS'es on the same drive (preferably ala
VMWare so they run concurrently) is a requirement of a modern OS. And when
one talks about 'distributed computing' there is an inherent assumption of
heterogenious environments. It's the interface to the system that must be
compatible, not the system itself. Treat the OS as an object, thunking
layer.

Plan 9 could be much more popular if it had process and file deamons that
ran on other OS'es, p2p and bidirectional. It would be more popular and
more useful if it ran in VMWare. This would allow the user the ability to
have the OS'es executing in parallel with cut-n-paste.

On Sun, 7 Jan 2001, William Staniewicz wrote:

> Several times a day I switch effortlessly between my
> Plan9 and FreeBSD/Win95 partitions. I use the floppy
> most of the time to get back into Plan9 but have no
> problem with the boot loaders.
> 
> Bill
> 
> > Having been pointed at the docs, you have to go
> > out of your way to be compliant, so, as predicted,
> > the Plan 9 PC kernels are not.
> > 
> > It doesn't seem worth running after, either, since
> > our PC boot process depends on 9load doing things like
> > putting plan9.ini in memory somewhere for us.  So the
> > "kernel" that a multiboot booter would be handed would
> > really be 9load, and it just seems ridiculously complicated.
> > 
> > As far as coexisting with other PC operating systems,
> > which is a broader issue, Plan 9 is perfectly happy to
> > sit within its own partition.  If you mark the partition
> > active, it boots.  If you have another boot loader like
> > NTLDR or LILO jump to that partition, it should boot,
> > although I haven't tried recently.
> > 
> > Russ
> 

Re: [9fans] plan 9 and multiboot

[William Staniewicz]

Several times a day I switch effortlessly between my
Plan9 and FreeBSD/Win95 partitions. I use the floppy
most of the time to get back into Plan9 but have no
problem with the boot loaders.

Bill

> Having been pointed at the docs, you have to go
> out of your way to be compliant, so, as predicted,
> the Plan 9 PC kernels are not.
> 
> It doesn't seem worth running after, either, since
> our PC boot process depends on 9load doing things like
> putting plan9.ini in memory somewhere for us.  So the
> "kernel" that a multiboot booter would be handed would
> really be 9load, and it just seems ridiculously complicated.
> 
> As far as coexisting with other PC operating systems,
> which is a broader issue, Plan 9 is perfectly happy to
> sit within its own partition.  If you mark the partition
> active, it boots.  If you have another boot loader like
> NTLDR or LILO jump to that partition, it should boot,
> although I haven't tried recently.
> 
> Russ

Re: [9fans] plan 9 and multiboot

[Micah Stetson]

> active, it boots.  If you have another boot loader like
> NTLDR or LILO jump to that partition, it should boot,
> although I haven't tried recently.

It certainly does work.  I was using LILO to switch between
Plan 9 and Linux up until I got fed up with having to leave
Plan 9 to use Linux.  Now my desktop machine runs only Plan 9
and the GNU/Linux box has been put off in another corner of
the room where I can access it with vncviewer if I really
feel the need.  Mutliboot works, but it's a pain if you have
to switch very often.

On another topic, why are color depths greater than 8 bpp
explicitly disabled in the clgd542x driver?  I tried to find
some documentation on the chipset to see if I could add
support myself, but the company that owns the specifications
(no longer Cirrus Logic) charges $25 just to download the
information.  For that price, I might as well buy a video
card with better support (I probably have one laying around
here anyway).  However, if somebody is working on improving
the driver, I'll just wait and save myself the trouble of
digging up another video adapter.

Micah

Re: [9fans] plan 9 and multiboot

[jmk]

On Sat Jan  6 20:55:18 EST 2001, rsc@plan9.bell-labs.com said:
>   On another topic, why are color depths greater than 8 bpp
>   explicitly disabled in the clgd542x driver? 
> 
> Most of the drivers were written assuming that
> the only color depths were 1, 2, 4, and 8.
> When we put true-color support in (and thus broke
> the assumption), we went through and explicitly
> disabled >8bpp in all the old drivers.
> 
> Russ

Also, adding >8bpp support is fairly easy for those chips, but
without any acceleration it becomes unacceptably slow. I certainly
have paper copies of the manuals and also perhaps some PDFs if
anyone wants to do the work.

--jim

Re: [9fans] plan 9 and multiboot

[Russ Cox]

  On another topic, why are color depths greater than 8 bpp
  explicitly disabled in the clgd542x driver? 

Most of the drivers were written assuming that
the only color depths were 1, 2, 4, and 8.
When we put true-color support in (and thus broke
the assumption), we went through and explicitly
disabled >8bpp in all the old drivers.

Russ

[9fans] plan 9 and multiboot

[Russ Cox]

Having been pointed at the docs, you have to go
out of your way to be compliant, so, as predicted,
the Plan 9 PC kernels are not.

It doesn't seem worth running after, either, since
our PC boot process depends on 9load doing things like
putting plan9.ini in memory somewhere for us.  So the
"kernel" that a multiboot booter would be handed would
really be 9load, and it just seems ridiculously complicated.

As far as coexisting with other PC operating systems,
which is a broader issue, Plan 9 is perfectly happy to
sit within its own partition.  If you mark the partition
active, it boots.  If you have another boot loader like
NTLDR or LILO jump to that partition, it should boot,
although I haven't tried recently.

Russ