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There's Plan 9 Front. http://9front.org http://9front.org I've used Plan 9 a few times in the last handful of years. Someone got a reasonably good Linux emul

There's Plan 9 Front. http://9front.org http://9front.org I've used Plan 9 a few times in the last handful of years. Someone got a reasonably good Linux emulator working enough to run Firefox. What more could you need? (ok it was fairly limited in some ways, but shoot once you have a web browser, most of the rest is cake... especially if it's Chrome, because then you can install Mosh inside it!) Not sure if that's practical on Plan 9 right now.

qubex 9y ago
Call me odd, but I like native software — web-apps et al are not my style. Similarly, bastardising everything so Linux binaries run on it kind of defeats the point (at least in my mind). But yeah, I'm odd.
- butterisgood 9y ago
  Ok, well I lived in google chrome mosh for about 4 months. It was fine :-) Full screen too.
- derefr 9y ago
  > bastardising everything so Linux binaries run on it kind of defeats the point Is there all that much of a difference between the kind of "secondary syscall ABI" approaches that allow OSes like Windows and Illumos to virtualize Linux binaries, and autoconf-based porting of those projects so they compile for the target OS, if they only use POSIX facilities that both OSes offer the same way anyway? I mean, I agree with you when it comes to e.g. programs that use heavy amounts of OS-specific concurrency or IPC primitives. Postgres in WSL on Windows does not have the same concurrency semantics as MSSQL on Windows does, because Postgres is using POSIX concurrency primitives and MSSQL is using NT concurrency primitives. But if there's a subset of your kernel's syscall ABI, that already has those same semantics, and really can just be 1:1 mapped with maybe a few extra instructions to handle different argument passing conventions—then does porting such a program to the OS really achieve anything?
rcarmo 9y ago
It wasn't a year back, at least for relatively recent versions. Nothing substantial has changed, so I think it still isn't
pmoriarty 9y ago
"Someone got a reasonably good Linux emulator working enough to run Firefox. What more could you need?" It would be nice if Plan 9 had vim or emacs.
- pjmlp 9y ago
  ACME FTW. :)
  - pmoriarty 9y ago
    A mouse-oriented editor? That's about the opposite of what I'd want.
    - pjmlp 9y ago
      Mouse oriented editors combined with keyboard shortcuts, is like playing FPS with a PC against console gamers. Or maybe it just shows my bias for IDEs. :)
  - Koshkin 9y ago
    I think it is worth noting that acme, the editor, borrows heavily from N. Wirth's Oberon, the OS.
- ZephyrP 9y ago
  It does, Vim is available through pkg on 9Front and works really well. The only thing I would say is that `:Ex` works a little funky (although generally quite well). Furthermore there exists "A Posix Emulator" (ape) that is serviceable.
ZephyrP 9y ago
A common thing to do here is to virtualize 9front, connect back to a VNC window hosting Chrome. It sounds really janky but it's genuinely difficult to tell that you're not inside Chrome -- people have even asked "How in did you port Chrome to Plan 9.
still_grokking 9y ago
I didn't know Mosh until now. Thank you so much for mentioning it! :-)

qubex 9y ago

Call me odd, but I like native software — web-apps et al are not my style. Similarly, bastardising everything so Linux binaries run on it kind of defeats the point (at least in my mind). But yeah, I'm odd.

butterisgood 9y ago
Ok, well I lived in google chrome mosh for about 4 months. It was fine :-) Full screen too.
derefr 9y ago
> bastardising everything so Linux binaries run on it kind of defeats the point Is there all that much of a difference between the kind of "secondary syscall ABI" approaches that allow OSes like Windows and Illumos to virtualize Linux binaries, and autoconf-based porting of those projects so they compile for the target OS, if they only use POSIX facilities that both OSes offer the same way anyway? I mean, I agree with you when it comes to e.g. programs that use heavy amounts of OS-specific concurrency or IPC primitives. Postgres in WSL on Windows does not have the same concurrency semantics as MSSQL on Windows does, because Postgres is using POSIX concurrency primitives and MSSQL is using NT concurrency primitives. But if there's a subset of your kernel's syscall ABI, that already has those same semantics, and really can just be 1:1 mapped with maybe a few extra instructions to handle different argument passing conventions—then does porting such a program to the OS really achieve anything?

rcarmo 9y ago

It wasn't a year back, at least for relatively recent versions. Nothing substantial has changed, so I think it still isn't

pmoriarty 9y ago

"Someone got a reasonably good Linux emulator working enough to run Firefox. What more could you need?" It would be nice if Plan 9 had vim or emacs.

pjmlp 9y ago
ACME FTW. :)
- pmoriarty 9y ago
  A mouse-oriented editor? That's about the opposite of what I'd want.
  - pjmlp 9y ago
    Mouse oriented editors combined with keyboard shortcuts, is like playing FPS with a PC against console gamers. Or maybe it just shows my bias for IDEs. :)
- Koshkin 9y ago
  I think it is worth noting that acme, the editor, borrows heavily from N. Wirth's Oberon, the OS.
ZephyrP 9y ago
It does, Vim is available through pkg on 9Front and works really well. The only thing I would say is that `:Ex` works a little funky (although generally quite well). Furthermore there exists "A Posix Emulator" (ape) that is serviceable.

ZephyrP 9y ago

A common thing to do here is to virtualize 9front, connect back to a VNC window hosting Chrome. It sounds really janky but it's genuinely difficult to tell that you're not inside Chrome -- people have even asked "How in did you port Chrome to Plan 9.

still_grokking 9y ago

I didn't know Mosh until now. Thank you so much for mentioning it! :-)