From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu From: "Douglas A. Gwyn" Message-ID: <3B4B6E58.10A655A@null.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit References: <20010710182255.D8B1C199DD@mail.cse.psu.edu> Subject: Re: [9fans] General question about hosted interfaces Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 08:34:22 +0000 Topicbox-Message-UUID: c52e7ac4-eac9-11e9-9e20-41e7f4b1d025 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.