On 2/22/25 15:45, Alyssa M via 9fans wrote: > On Friday, February 21, 2025, at 11:14 PM, Dworkin Muller wrote: >> However, I'm talking about the scenario where you know absolutely nothing >> because you want to find out what this Plan 9 thing, and are starting from >> scratch trying to get an initial installation booted on hardware that may or >> may not be completely supported in the first place, and have no idea what >> you're doing, but the few follow-by-rote walkthroughs aren't quite working, >> and everything uses the #<foo> names. > Perhaps start with something easier? > > The Raspberry Pi is very cheap and available and runs Plan 9 from a standard > binary image with no need to mess with anything more than copying the image > onto a memory stick and plugging it in. > I think I got from switch-on to typing in a window without having to do > anything more than maybe press ENTER once. > I have a couple on my desk: a RPi2 running Richard Miller's classic Plan 9, > and a RPi4 running 9front. > I didn't have to do anything involving #<foo> names to get these running. > (Blessings to the people who made this possible!) > > I don't know whether Richard Miller's Edition will run on the later (64bit) > RPis, or whether 9front works on the RPi5 yet. You'd have to ask someone who > knows. The 9front images are on the releases page of 9front.org.
9front does not run on the rpi5 and there hasn't been anyone interested so far in doing the port work. In general I advise against using a pi as the introduction, modern pis are quite expensive compared to what you're getting and 9front community members which have worked on the rpi have had a consistent stream of frustration and flakiness in their performance and documentation. Once upon a time the pi was fairly cheap and easier to get compared to usable amd64 machine but I don't think that is the case anymore. You can grab pretty much any used thinkpad off ebay, many of which you'll find cheaper compared to the price of a pi4 or pi5, and you'll get much better bang for your buck. Or better, if you're just exploring use a VM and connect via drawterm. That's fairly consistent and you don't have to deal with potentially incompatible hardware. Hardware accelerated VMs are really quite good these days. At this point I would only suggest getting a pi if you either want to use Richard Miller's distribution or have a particular interest/need for arm or arm64 9front. Not worth the headache if you actually want to use it for something. Thanks, moody ------------------------------------------ 9fans: 9fans Permalink: https://9fans.topicbox.com/groups/9fans/Tabc159d56e7ead54-Mcc29bb49e3922a4da6d59ff6 Delivery options: https://9fans.topicbox.com/groups/9fans/subscription
