On Sat, Jul 25, 2009 at 8:08 PM, Corey<co...@bitworthy.net> wrote: > > I understand that, but I didn't pose my question correctly. The gist behind > the question might have made more sense if I had phrased it differently: > > Given the following ridiculously contrived hypothetical situation: > > You only had a single computer in your house, and you could only run > Plan 9 on it... > > Would you opt to install and configure it with a terminal kernel, or would > you decide to use a cpu kernel, with auth and fs services enabled? Or is > there simply no reason to prefer one over the other given such constrained > circumstances? > > I realize it's totally "against the point" to have a _single_ plan 9 box; but > I doubt it's all that rare when you step outside the lab or the corporate > environment and peer into the domiciles of everyday people using plan 9 > at home for personal experimentation and educational purposes. >
To the contrary, I think it is highly likely that anyone interested in Plan 9 has a spare computer to try it on, or in these days of fast processors, big disks, and lotsa-RAM, they'd boot in a virtualized environment. Don't bring in the tired old argument "but what about average users who want to switch from Windows", because that's not what happens. Everyday people do not use Plan 9, they don't even know Plan 9 exists, they got Linux on a netbook a year ago and got upset because it was weird. Strange adventurous people with an interest in operating systems & software try Plan 9, and such people tend to have spare computers around. If you have only one computer in the entire house, you run Linux on it, with Xen or Qemu or whatever to run Plan 9 at the same time and set it up as a CPU/auth/file server. Then you connect via drawterm. If that's not the answer you want, I'd install as a terminal and just deal with it. Or find a PIII desktop on Craigslist for $30 and use that. Desktop computers cost less than cell phones these days. Of course, we could continue all day in the "but what if..." vein, in some weird attempt to satisfy whatever particular solution you were hoping for--if we restrict the options enough, then yes, we will get the answer you want. John -- "I've tried programming Ruby on Rails, following TechCrunch in my RSS reader, and drinking absinthe. It doesn't work. I'm going back to C, Hunter S. Thompson, and cheap whiskey." -- Ted Dziuba
