Re: [9fans] Returning to Plan 9: Virtualization, Distributions

[John Floren <john@jfloren.net>]

On Tue, Nov 22, 2011 at 2:57 PM, Joel C. Salomon <joelcsalomon@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 11/22/2011 10:46 AM, ron minnich wrote:
>> If you're serious about booting a 64-bit os you need NIX. But you're
>> not going to get graphics.
>
> To which, on 11/22/2011 11:00 AM, erik quanstrom responded:
>> today's nix is quite raw.  unless you're working on nix itself,
>> you'll be happier with plan 9.
>
> Is NIX the only distribution for amd64, then?  I just want to play
> around in user space: learn Go, use Unicode in C, &c., &c.  Would I be
> better off using a 32-bit distro?
>
> —Joel

You should be able to happily use Nix as a 32-bit Plan 9 system.
Unfortunately we don't distribute an install ISO, but I have been
playing around with a bootable USB stick with a full-blown fossil
environment on it. The current task is to get it booting the nix
kernel as well as the regular 32-bit ones--we're getting there!

I guess there's no reason we *couldn't* do an install ISO... without
modifications it would just give you a 32 bit environment with the Nix
source available, and the selection of changes we've made.


John