Re: [9fans] Living with Plan 9

[John Floren <john@jfloren.net>]

On Tue, Jun 7, 2011 at 11:23 AM, Stanley Lieber
<stanley.lieber@gmail.com> wrote:
>> I note there is a Linux user binary emulation and X11  available. Is it sufficient
>> to set up a Linux environment on Plan 9 including all the niceties offered by
>> Linux modern distribution? Does this completely defeat the purpose of using
>> Plan9 in the first place ? If it makes sense, I'd appreciate some guidance in
>> this regard. If not, some suggestions on how to best live with *nix ugliness
>> would be welcome.
>
> Linuxemu is capable of running a full Linux environment, but performance is
> short of optimal.
>
> Currently, tls is not fully implemented, so pre-tls versions of Linux
> libraries are required. The example mroot[1] linked at the linuxemu wiki page[2]
> is based on an old version of Debian. My own mroot[3] includes Opera 9.50
> and some other pre-installed packages. Note: the snarf/copy/paste buffer is not
> accessible interchangeably between equis and Plan 9 proper.
>
> The best way to get an idea of whether or not you find this method tolerable
> is to try it out on your hardware. The faster your system, and the more RAM
> you have available, the better equis/linuxemu will perform. In many cases, I
> find a laptop running Plan 9 native with equis/linuxemu to be sufficient for
> short sessions of casual browsing.
>
> For daily use I tend to do web browsing/multimedia in OpenBSD and drawterm
> to a Thinkpad running Plan 9 native. Basically, all of my text file processing
> (programming, web development, IRC, etc.) takes place in Plan 9. OpenBSD is
> my firmware layer to take advantage of my hardware and a platform for reasonably
> snappy web browsing in Chromium. Since I've yet to stumble across a video card
> that can tackle 1920x1080 with DVI or HDMI output (VGA or VESA mode), I've
> been reluctant to attempt using equis/linuxemu full-time on my primary desktop
> system.
>
> -sl
>
> [1] http://9hal.ath.cx/usr/cinap_lenrek/mroot-linuxemu.tbz
> [2] http://www.plan9.bell-labs.com/wiki/plan9/Linux_emulation/index.html
> [3] http://plan9.stanleylieber.com/linuxemu/mroot.tgz
>
>

I ran Plan 9 on an older AMD64 terminal (in 32-bit mode). Using (IIRC)
the nvidia driver I got reasonably good video performance at a high
resolution. I had a dedicated dual PIII set up as a cpu/auth/file
server running Fossil and Venti. I would run linuxemu on the AMD64
terminal, display through equis, and run Opera and Openoffice when I
needed them. The biggest problem with this setup was that you cannot
copy/paste between Plan 9 and the programs running under equis. If
copy/paste is supported by Plan 9's VNC client, you could use that
instead to solve the problem.


John