Re: [9fans] General question about hosted interfaces

["Douglas A. Gwyn" <DAGwyn@null.net>]

Thanks, Rob, I appreciate the feedback.

I guess I'm frustrated by how hard it is to share a desktop
system between Plan 9 and other OSes (multibooting), due to
the difficulty in supporting myriad PC devices.  This is
not a complaint about the work of the Plan 9 development
team, just an unfortunate situation.

Maybe time would be better spent in designing a new system
architecture *so* compelling in its advantages over our
current common platform that it has a good chance to
displace the whole [deleted] thing.  One idea I've had for
some time is that peripherals ought to be self-identifying
plug-ins that use a common protocol, something like 9P --
it ought not to be necessary to have to write a new piece
of platform-specific software to get *some* basic
functionality out of new hardware.  So far the closest
realization of this notion has been SCSI, but it doesn't
take the idea nearly far enough.