Re: [9fans] Plan 9 on Mac Mini x86?

["David Leimbach" <leimy2k@gmail.com>]

On 4/5/06, Jack Johnson <knapjack@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 4/5/06, Daniel Soderstrom <snaggs@mac.com> wrote:
> > Can Plan 9 be installed on a x86 Mac Mini? I'd like to have a play
> > with Plan 9, but don't want a ugly bitsa PC taking up the space. I
> > should be able to do everything remotely on the Plan 9 box just using
> > ssh or x windows?
>
> Plan 9 runs well in QEMU, and there's a friendly port to OSX that
> seems to have universal binaries:
>
> http://www.kberg.ch/q/
>
> >From there, you can boot the ISO image directly, do a standard
> installation, and have the joy of easy access to a Web browser while
> you're learning how to set it up. :)
>
> Performance on an x86 Mac should be pretty good, but I've only tried
> it on PowerPC.

I've been using this all week.  It's not too shabby, though the mouse
cursor refresh seems a bit choppy.  I'm looking forward to seeing what
Parallels comes up with and if it will run closer to native speed. 
I'm happy to shell out 50 bucks for a good hypervisor. :-)

One word of caution, don't do the venti install on a large disk
partition in an emulator that can't do DMA.  Zeroing out the disk is
painful enough on real hardware though I think Russ has improved that
or will have those improvements available soon.

>
> SSH does exist for Plan 9, but the remote X alternatives are VNC and
> drawterm, as Plan 9 doesn't use X for its native display.
>

drawterm is like, sent from heaven or something :)

> Best of luck,
>
> -Jack
>