Oh sure, lots of things are “inconvenient” on Plan 9.
Of note for most would-be users: if you rely on a modern web browser like Firefox/Chrome, forget about it. Never going to happen.
It’s important to remember that Plan 9 is fundamentally a research operating system; it’s not really a “typical” environment by any stretch, and that stems largely from it being entirely network-based and distributed. A single Plan 9 system in isolation can only be so interesting. Using it on a laptop like this can be an entirely different set of problems.
If you’d like some examples of things you may face:
booting can be slow
can be intimidating to set up for some of the more important features – factotum(4) and secstore(1), new users and directories under /, etc.
cwfs is slow
hjfs is really slow
no multi-monitor support
only recently did we get a filesystem that specifically aims to be crash-safe
poor documentation, though it’s been getting better
reading research papers is basically a requirement for understanding the system
security is not a priority
For me, though? I genuinely don’t need much more than what’s available in the base system.
![[rio] Plan 9 is not UNIX](https://9p.sdf.org/who/bubstance/img/9front-rio_mono.png){kind=link}
You’re running Plan9 on real hardware???
How’s it faring?
But of course! Real hardware or bust.
This particular machine has been my daily driver for months now, so I would say it is faring quite well.
Got all the device driver support?
On this machine I have everything except for Bluetooth and the fingerprint reader, neither of which I ever use anyway.
Do you browse on this?
Indeed.
9front comes with two browsers out of the box:
abacoandmothra. There is also a port of NetSurf as well as both gopher and gemini browsers.Nice! I think I’m gonna follow that footstep.
something you can’t do or any inconvenience on this system?
Oh sure, lots of things are “inconvenient” on Plan 9.
Of note for most would-be users: if you rely on a modern web browser like Firefox/Chrome, forget about it. Never going to happen.
It’s important to remember that Plan 9 is fundamentally a research operating system; it’s not really a “typical” environment by any stretch, and that stems largely from it being entirely network-based and distributed. A single Plan 9 system in isolation can only be so interesting. Using it on a laptop like this can be an entirely different set of problems.
If you’d like some examples of things you may face:
booting can be slow
can be intimidating to set up for some of the more important features –
factotum(4)andsecstore(1), new users and directories under/, etc.cwfsis slowhjfsis really slowno multi-monitor support
only recently did we get a filesystem that specifically aims to be crash-safe
poor documentation, though it’s been getting better
reading research papers is basically a requirement for understanding the system
security is not a priority
For me, though? I genuinely don’t need much more than what’s available in the base system.