Not dead; more like Schrödinger's OS.

On Fri, Nov 22, 2019, 3:16 PM <sl@9front.org> wrote:

> most of these answers don't really answer the question everyone knows
> op is asking.  why do we always play these games?
>
> the answer is: no, vanilla plan 9 is not still alive.
>
> background:
>
> plan 9's creators all left bell labs many years ago, and none of them
> use plan 9 anymore[0].  bell labs itself has changed hands a couple of
> times since development of plan 9 came to its ignoble end.  yes, some
> third parties occasionally tinker.  richard miller puts out code that
> can be run on raspberry pi hardware.  some other former heavy users
> occasionally push piecemeal bits of personal projects into the public
> eye.  nobody takes any of it seriously because none of them really use
> plan 9 to do anything people use computers to do[1].  which is not to
> say their efforts aren't appreciated.  thanks, guys.
>
> for some reason, when interested newbs show up on this mailing list
> asking this same question, which happens from time to time, they're
> always made to believe there exists a thriving community of devoted
> plan 9 from bell labs users eager to point them towards resources
> useful for running plan 9 on a computer manufactured after sbc
> rebranded itself as at&t.
>
> 9front was created in 2011 because by then it had already been
> apparent for several years that this was a baldfaced lie.
>
> failing a massive leak of all the code 9fans will swear to you they
> are running on their modern computers, your choices include:
>
> - 9front (new drivers, modern cryptography, useful new programs)
> - 9legacy (an attempt to combine patches from all extant personally
>         maintained copies of the plan 9 source tree)
>
> don't thank me until you've tried to get straight answers to follow-up
> questions.
>
> sl
>
> [0] http://fqa.9front.org/fqa0.html#0.2.3
>
> [1] i'm typing this on a thinkpad x250, over intel wifi/wpa2, running
> 1920x1080 on the native lcd.  it's running plan 9, but is sure ain't
> vanilla[2].
>
> [2] oh yeah, all the code is available here:
> http://code.9front.org/hg/plan9front
>
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