On Tue, Jun 7, 2011 at 11:23 AM, Stanley Lieber <stanley.lie...@gmail.com> wrote: >> I note there is a Linux user binary emulation and X11 available. Is it >> sufficient >> to set up a Linux environment on Plan 9 including all the niceties offered by >> Linux modern distribution? Does this completely defeat the purpose of using >> Plan9 in the first place ? If it makes sense, I'd appreciate some guidance in >> this regard. If not, some suggestions on how to best live with *nix ugliness >> would be welcome. > > Linuxemu is capable of running a full Linux environment, but performance is > short of optimal. > > Currently, tls is not fully implemented, so pre-tls versions of Linux > libraries are required. The example mroot[1] linked at the linuxemu wiki > page[2] > is based on an old version of Debian. My own mroot[3] includes Opera 9.50 > and some other pre-installed packages. Note: the snarf/copy/paste buffer is > not > accessible interchangeably between equis and Plan 9 proper. > > The best way to get an idea of whether or not you find this method tolerable > is to try it out on your hardware. The faster your system, and the more RAM > you have available, the better equis/linuxemu will perform. In many cases, I > find a laptop running Plan 9 native with equis/linuxemu to be sufficient for > short sessions of casual browsing. > > For daily use I tend to do web browsing/multimedia in OpenBSD and drawterm > to a Thinkpad running Plan 9 native. Basically, all of my text file processing > (programming, web development, IRC, etc.) takes place in Plan 9. OpenBSD is > my firmware layer to take advantage of my hardware and a platform for > reasonably > snappy web browsing in Chromium. Since I've yet to stumble across a video card > that can tackle 1920x1080 with DVI or HDMI output (VGA or VESA mode), I've > been reluctant to attempt using equis/linuxemu full-time on my primary desktop > system. > > -sl > > [1] http://9hal.ath.cx/usr/cinap_lenrek/mroot-linuxemu.tbz > [2] http://www.plan9.bell-labs.com/wiki/plan9/Linux_emulation/index.html > [3] http://plan9.stanleylieber.com/linuxemu/mroot.tgz > >
I ran Plan 9 on an older AMD64 terminal (in 32-bit mode). Using (IIRC) the nvidia driver I got reasonably good video performance at a high resolution. I had a dedicated dual PIII set up as a cpu/auth/file server running Fossil and Venti. I would run linuxemu on the AMD64 terminal, display through equis, and run Opera and Openoffice when I needed them. The biggest problem with this setup was that you cannot copy/paste between Plan 9 and the programs running under equis. If copy/paste is supported by Plan 9's VNC client, you could use that instead to solve the problem. John
