Re: Again: (self)hosted Plan9? Was: [9fans] extending xen to allow

["Russ Cox" <rsc@swtch.com>]

We talked at length about this issue at IWP9 without a lot of consensus.
However, I think that many of us agreed on these points:

 - writing drivers sucks.
 - copying Linux and Windows will accomplish very little.
 - one significant place where Plan 9 wins is using it as a versatile
   base for building pieces that people use without knowing it's Plan 9
   (e.g., Sape's wireless base stations, Rangboom, xcpu, and
   many Inferno apps that Charles can't talk about).
 - there may be real value in finding a way to use Xen or other
   virtualization technologies to run Plan 9 on machines (for example,
   terminals) where you care more about the convenience of having
   Plan 9 than about the performance (or reliability!) of having it in
   control of the hardware.

And perhaps most important of all:

 - remember to keep it fun!

I can't deny the utility of having Firefox (I'm writing this in a
Firefox window), but even if Plan 9 could run Firefox, the next
thing would be oh but it needs to be able to run these ten
plugins, and so on and so on.  Personally, I think you are going
to be much happier running Plan 9 in some VM environment on
Linux or Windows than putting in the effort for the other way around.

Russ