9fans archive / 1997 / 04 / 28 /    prev next

From: Nigel Roles ngr@sym...
Subject: porting linux programs and drivers to plan9
Date: Fri, 18 Apr 1997 08:15:49 +0100

>At 10:33 17/04/97 -0600, Rich writes:
>>2) Would the community like ports of (or diffs for) linux programs and
>>drivers to plan9? (programs like the newest emacs, another pppclient,
>>graphic c/c++ libraries, windows smb mounts, full linux ext2 mounts,
>>gmake, maybe even gcc? and drivers for mad16 (OPTi) sound cards and
>>cirrus logic video) [obviously some are very easy to extremely
>>difficult]
>
>Drivers are *always* useful. A full ext2fs server would be particularly
>marvellous, letting people keep their data visible under a choice of systems.
>
>Drivers, yes. Linux ones, well....
>
>My experience of this is that there is such a fundamental (and welcome)
>difference in the nature of the Plan 9 kernel that a 'port' of a Linux driver
>can be very inefficient. Plan 9 is not Unix in drag; it's Unix with a lot of
>the mess removed, and should be kept that way.
>