Love the tailpiece! Rustic simplicity at its finest.

mail(1) or nedmail(1) is all I really need.

I prefer mutt/neomutt, but Thunderbird comes by default in basically every desktop-oriented distro I regularly interact with, so I end up using that most often on *nix. K-9 if I want it on my phone.

My true love is the combination of acme(1) and faces(1), but that doesn't do encryption/PGP stuff.

You are correct and this can be seen in some of the old AT&T demos from the '80s floating around on YouTube. There is even a chart that specifically labels a directory like /usr/bwk as the user's home.

Plan 9 also uses this old convention; users live under /usr and there is no /home.

I always enable disk encryption, but I wonder why Linux doesn't support secure boot and TPM based encryption ( I know that Ubuntu has plans for the later that's why I'm considering it rn )

There is at least one that, as of recently, offers both out of the box: OpenSUSE Aeon. In fact, TPM-based encryption is now mandatory.

It's rolling—based on OpenSUSE Tumbleweed—and atomic.

I need something that keeps things updated and adobts newer standards fast ( that's why I picked Fedora KDE in the first place ), I also use lots of graphical tools and video editing software, so I need the proprietary Nvidia drivers

This could be another point in Aeon's favor: it uses a combination of Flatpaks and Distrobox, meaning you can use software from basically any distribution you desire—including from, say, Arch's AUR.

I'll warn you ahead of time: Aeon and its developer are very opinionated. It's basically one person's idea of what makes "the best desktop Linux system," and those are Richard's words, not mine. It is also currently still in the release candidate stage.

Plan 9 is still actively developed in the form of 9front; updates and new features trickle down to 9legacy from there.

The "original" Plan 9—meaning stock 4th Edition—is more of a museum piece at this point, though, yes.

I can say that, at least in the Southwestern US, our local Kroger stores all use Linux of some variety at their self-checkouts. I've seen the same as above: mostly CentOS and Rocky.

Sure, basically any Debian-based distro should have gdebi in its repos.

It used to be that everyone in the Boot Camp got their own VM that was wiped each season, but recently everything was migrated to a single installation that doesn't reset and everyone uses.

In short: now you get a permanent account.

And yes, SDF itself is NetBSD-based—the largest single installation as well as a primary testing environment, if I'm not mistaken.

Python 2.5.1 was distributed as part of 9front back when it used hg, but it was ultimately removed from the base system once we switched over to git9. 9legacy still packages binaries, however; they're up to 2.7.6 for Python and 2.9.2 for Mercurial.

I never bother with venti/fossil, honestly. I'm more of a cwfs kind of person, but Ori's gefs has been attracting my attention lately.

DECSYSTEM-2065

The front fell off.

DO NOT INSTALL!

If you ever want to just poke around a Plan 9 system, SDF Public Access UNIX System offers an ongoing Plan 9 Boot Camp.

Stop by and join us in com sometime!

Additionally, for those that may want a Plan 9 that's being actively developed and will actually work on modern hardware:

https://9front.org

There's also 9legacy, which is basically "classic" Plan 9 with some patches from 9front.

I use it because it's truly a "complete system" in a way that Linux and even the BSDs are not—every program is an example in itself and it comes with a ton of various scratch-built utilities that you don't usually find as part of a typical Linux distro. Stuff like a basic torrent or IRC client just sort of fall out of the way Plan 9 is organized and implemented.

It also provides me with a distraction-free environment and a set of tools that I enjoy using, even if some aspects of Plan 9 as, say, a laptop daily driver are inconvenient or awkward. It really is better suited for networked computing.

I was pretty much sold from first contact because Plan 9 is the way that I feel best matches what I've always wanted from my machines: a simple grid of networked appliances where I can route the various resources and hardware in whatever way I require.

It is called rio(1) and it comes with Plan 9.

There is a Unix/X11 port that contains most of the Plan 9 userspace—including a version of rio—called plan9port.

It is not nearly as good as using the real thing.

In #cat-v? Not regularly. I mostly hang out in gridchat with a handful of the 9front people.

I already do.

There are dozens of us! Dozens!

That's not a photo of Dennis Ritchie, that's Brian Kernighan.

Closest thing for bash would be ble.sh.

I think it really is as simple as our dorks from the Labs liking Ed Wood.

Same reason the mascot is named Glenda.

As in a less mouse-driven way to move around? Or just a straight up different window manager?

For the first, 9front has extras on top of Plan 9 – riow(1) and a /dev/kbdtap device described in rio(4) – to allow for more keyboard-driven workflows. It can make rio into a sort of mouse-driven i3/ratpoison-ish thing... kind of.

I autostart it with rio like this:

riow </dev/kbdtap >/dev/kbdtap |[3] mybar

where mybar is a shell function that prints the status bar at the bottom of the screen. That part is used to intercept mouse clicks and turn them into commands for the audio player, zuke.

No, but it comes with Doom as well as a bunch of other games and emulators. See games(1) and nintendo(1) for details.

Perhaps just PNU?

That would be the port of NetSurf.

On this machine I have everything except for Bluetooth and the fingerprint reader, neither of which I ever use anyway.

I certainly hope so.

In all seriousness, it seems to me that interest in Plan 9 will continue to grow from here, especially with 9front taking the lead and actually moving ahead with real development.

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.

I guess that depends on if you consider doing basically all of my day-to-day computing as doing anything "real".

I use it for writing, email, programming, browsing, drawing, games... pretty much everything I would do on any other machine. Anything that I can't do directly in Plan 9 is done by accessing from Plan 9.

• machine: ThinkPad T420

• os: ⑨front

  • auth+cpu+file on encrypted cwfs

• wm: rio + riow

• programs:

  • aux/statusmsg

  • bar

  • clock

  • faces

  • stats

  • zuke

• wallpaper

For those interested in learning more about Plan 9 and trying it out in a public environment: SDF Public Access UNIX System is hosting their seasonal Plan 9 Boot Camp starting June 20th. Feel free to drop into com and say hello!

I have an RPi4 and a 0W that run 9front as diskless terminals thanks to that effort. It works really well!

Richard Miller is one of the OGs; he did the first port of UNIX, and if you look into Plan 9 more you'll see exactly how much of a connection to history it really is.

Nothing at all.

It's purely for my own needs — what worked for Rob Pike's eyes in the '90s doesn't really work for mine when it comes to actually using it every day, so I figured I'd have fun with it while I was changing the colors for the various programs.

I use it for all of my day-to-day computing tasks. Writing, email, browsing, programming, drawing, games... the works.

Anything I can't do directly in 9 is covered by a combination of ssh(1), vt(1), and vnc(1) — with just a touch of vmx(1) if I'm feeling dangerous.

Plan 9 is a research operating system developed by Bell Labs as a successor to UNIX.

I would suggest starting somewhere like here to get an idea of what it's about, as well as checking out this video from one of 9front's core contributors.

Very much and very actively.

There are new commits every week and the latest release was April 28th.

All? I just use it like any other computer, honestly.

Are there any specific questions you have? I can try my best to explain.

Indeed.

9front comes with two browsers out of the box: abaco and mothra. There is also a port of NetSurf as well as both gopher and gemini browsers.

It uses /dev/draw.

See draw(3) and rio(4) for details.

It's an email indicator. See faces(1) for details.