[9fans] only old hardware supported?

[9fans] only old hardware supported?

[Phil Roessler]

I'm thinking of trying out Plan9 as I have a general interest in OSs and
maybe even want to get involved in the further development.
I'm not an expert in hardware but the supported HW list in the Plan9
FAQs gives me the impression that only outdated HW - especially only old
graphics cards - are supported. So maybe Plan9 wouldn't even run on the
new computer which I want to buy, right!

Phil

Re: [9fans] only old hardware supported?

[Ish Rattan]

On Thu, 1 Aug 2002, Phil Roessler wrote:

> graphics cards - are supported. So maybe Plan9 wouldn't even run on the
> new computer which I want to buy, right!
You said it.

-ishwar

Re: [9fans] only old hardware supported?

[Andrew Simmons]

> So maybe Plan9 wouldn't even run on the
> new computer which I want to buy, right!
>
> Phil

One option you could look at is running Plan9 under VMWare, which has
a 30 day trial option, and costs around $US300 for the full version.
Performance won't be that stellar, but it's not bad - I'm running it
on a 700MHz machine with 128Mb RAM and it works fine.

[9fans] Re: only old hardware supported?

[Douglas A. Gwyn]

Phil Roessler wrote:
> ... only outdated HW - especially only old graphics cards - are
> supported.

NVIDIA GEForce2 and GEForce3 cards work.

The basic problem is that in the "PC architecture" each graphics
chipset requires its own unique driver, and the graphics card
manufacturers aren't very interested in supporting any OS other
than a "mass market" one, e.g. Windows and sometimes Linux.

If there were a good, standard frame-buffer interface then life
would be so much simpler.  But vendors aren't much interested in
the idea.

[9fans] Re: only old hardware supported?

[petra]

"Douglas A. Gwyn" schrieb:

> Phil Roessler wrote:
> > ... only outdated HW - especially only old graphics cards - are
> > supported.
>
> NVIDIA GEForce2 and GEForce3 cards work.
>
> The basic problem is that in the "PC architecture" each graphics
> chipset requires its own unique driver, and the graphics card
> manufacturers aren't very interested in supporting any OS other
> than a "mass market" one, e.g. Windows and sometimes Linux.
>
> If there were a good, standard frame-buffer interface then life
> would be so much simpler.  But vendors aren't much interested in
> the idea.

How do other OSs (e.g. the various BSDs) overcome this problem? Do they
build their own drivers? How diffcult is this on Plan9?

Petra

[9fans] Re: only old hardware supported?

[Douglas A. Gwyn]

petra wrote:
> How do other OSs (e.g. the various BSDs) overcome this problem? Do they
> build their own drivers? How diffcult is this on Plan9?

Generally there are four possibilities:
(1) They don't support the card.
(2) They support the card in standard "VGA" or a "VESA" mode.
(3) The vendor supports the platform (usually just Linux these days)
    by providing a driver.
(4) The legion of platform users includes somebody who has access to
    the necessary technical information (often not easy to get) and
    puts in the work to create a driver.

Plan 9 doesn't allow options (2) or (3).  Option (2) is eliminated
because the current implementation requires hardware cursor support.
Option (3) is eliminated because card vendors don't see Plan 9 as a
mass market that would repay driver development expenses.

[9fans] Re: only old hardware supported?

[Russ Cox]

> How do other OSs (e.g. the various BSDs) overcome this problem? Do they
> build their own drivers? How diffcult is this on Plan9?

The various BSDs all run XFree86.  XFree86 overcomes this
problem by having orders of magnitude more driver writers
than Plan 9 does.

Russ