Hello,
has any of the lucky owners possibly had experience with Plan9 or 9Front? It should run fine via OpenBSDs vmm (9Front at least), but I wonder if it is possible to install it on bare framework metal (again, talking about 9Front 
- but I doubt that this will work with the trackpad).
Thank you very much in advance!
After two years of increasing traction (both for 9front and Framework), is there any news here?
9Front has a great Youtube vlog these days in the form of Adventures in 9, which I have enjoyed dipping into, although I think the system itself might still be a little beyond my capabilities at present.
Unfortunately for Framework, the MNT Reform range seems to own the market for 9Front-specific laptops, with the ubiquitous Thinkpad being a shoe-in if shopping for older hardware.
I have a 9front installation on a usb stick that boots ok (without networking) on my 11th Gen Intel Framework. Trackpad works ok in rio though you are going to want a 3-button mouse - I use a Contour wireless usb mouse that also works.
I normally use it on an X280 Thinkpad and networking works there with an Intel ethernet adapter. I doubt wifi is going to work on the Framework though it might be possible to get usb-c ethernet working.
It might be easier to use one or more vm installs with qemu and drawterm in from the host Linux. You could use both legacy Plan9 and 9front this way.
Thanks for reporting your installation attempt.
9Front seems to really be going places. For the curious, The Register (UK trade journal for IT) has reported on the latest release in December, speculates on reasons for the project’s weird aesthetic and gives a brief summation of the other Plan 9 projects.
Do you know much about R9, the kernel re-written in Rust, mentioned there? I’m no expert, but this seems a sensible thing to do, because I gather Plan9 is written in a non-standard version of C language which might put people off. Especially when one considers that legacy kernels - with orders of magnitude more effort already sunk into their codebase using orthodox C such as Linux - are considering using Rust as worthwhile for its merits.
I had a further play with 9front on my 11th gen Framework and have got networking with a usb-c ethernet adapter (built in to an OWC Travel Dock) working.
So the Framework looks like it could be a nice alternative to Thinkpads or the MNT Reform for anybody who wants bare metal 9front on a laptop.
I don’t know much about R9. The C dialect Plan 9 is written in isn’t that different from standard C though it lacks a lot of the gcc extensions that Linux uses.
Great news! Now we only need to worry about providing Framework with a pointing system that provides the three button mouse commands as you alluded to earlier. I don’t want to get on my hobby horse on the topic here, but suspect this will be the hard part.
On a more positive note, I gather The Register delivered a keynote talk at FOSDEM - really a fiery sermon - on the subject of software bloat which has been serialised as a number of articles. The general thrust seems to be that the descendants of UNIX have become fat and degenerate and Plan 9 shows a possible way forward. Fasten your seat belts and prepare yourself for some provocative views on Linux and Unix!
A colleague of mine many years ago reckoned the best Unix was the 286 version, as it used the underlying 8086 memory paging, which meant that the coding had to be tight and concise to fit in a page. He rued the day that the 386 went to a flat memory module.
Apparently R9 is the current focus of HarveyOS, who originally intended to release a distro of Plan9 with apps in Go. Perhaps the re-licensing of Plan 9 in super-permissive BSD license caused a bit of churn of the various projects, or everyone fell in line after 9Front emerged as the undisputed leader?
The knowledge and experience gained before their pivot will undoubtably assist greatly with this Rust rewrite. As would the small size of the OS and its kernel.
Not even 6 Months after their “Humanbiologics” release, 9Front have released “Do not Install”. I had no idea the system was evolving so rapidly - although it turns out twice yearly is their current cadence and is nothing compared to 2013 when they were managing a new release every month, complete with Garbage Pail Kids naming scheme!
I’ll leave it to The Register’s Liam Proven to explain.