What do I use the Plan 9 Operating System for? Here is one.

[@MrDmjay]

Thanks for the info mate.

[@an2qzavok]

if only inferno wasn't in a state of total bitrot, would make this kind of stuff a million times easier.

[@adventuresin9]

I suppose it depends on what you want to do. For some of the microcontroller IoT stuff, it could be argued that Inferno is better suited. For stuff that runs on standard CPU's, 9front/Plan9 is fine so long as drivers are added.

[@alurma]

can you explain why with an example?

[@adventuresin9]

Inferno was designed to take the ideas of Plan 9 and try to make a product that could be sold for use on "set-top-boxes". What we now call Internet-of-Things like devices. But this was the 90's. It was also going to compete with Java, by having a language that ran in a VM. Because of those 2 design decision, it was able to run on processors that had no Memory Management Unit, like a microcontroller. In simple terms, Inferno was meant to run on very low power processors in the 1990's, so today's low power processors are more than enough to run Inferno.

[@adventuresin9]

Another thing about the Inferno VM was it used a language called Limbo. Limbo was inspire by previous language Bell Labs had worked on called Alef. The people who left Bell Labs to go work at Google took the ideas from those languages to make Go. The Go gopher mascot looks a lot like the Plan 9 bunny mascot because they were made by the same person.

[@alurma]

well the bytecode vm part i do know about and i imagine there are downsides. don't really understand what it means for a system not to have an mmu though. i was curious to @an2qzavok what technical reasons there are that would make inferno much easier than a 9 system

[@malvinderkaur541]

Precisely I studied all of these earlier and also protested against saving anything on web or clouds so one has to think and think what should be the way out, there is after knowing all of this

[@illdieanyway7865]

Can a 9front machine with an ethernet and wlan card be used as Access Point? Would love to see that :)

[@adventuresin9]

At the moment, no. The current wifi code doesn't have anything for handling access points. It is on my list of things to do, but first is finishing a wifi driver for a wifi chip that actually runs in AP mode.

[@illdieanyway7865]

@@adventuresin9 oh man, that'd be really neat. Can't trust Linux to run your AP

[@adventuresin9]

The Linux that is used on these things is heavily modified. Credit where it is due, the people at OpenWRT do a really good job. But that job is trying to to cram a stand alone Unix system into a router, a long with a web server and the scripting to do all the management.

[@illdieanyway7865]

@@adventuresin9 yes, they even have made a replacement for dbus called obus, they do amazing stuff

[@superangrybrit]

I got bored of the same stuff being reinvented over and over... Plan9 is fresh. And since everything in computing is a *list*, the text file model works best. It has my attention. 👍 Edit: I always wished I could add an auth svr into my tp-link router.

[@adventuresin9]

It would probably be better for a home to have the wifi access point separate from the internet gateway. In that case, auth in the access point would be a straight forward way of handling it.

[@geoffreyvanpelt6147]

@@adventuresin9 That would be great for having separate logins for users and guests. Imagine you are in an area with bad cell reception and your delivery driver needs temporary internet access to process the delivery release authorization.

[@adventuresin9]

I got a little NFC board that connects via I2C, and every wifi router CPU has I2C. I've had the idea of adding to my router dev boards as a way of passing login info to things. Using it as a way to pass a temporary guest login is might be useful too.

[@xlretard]

reading my mind bruh

[@NicolasLeveille]

Is 9P encrypted somehow?

[@adventuresin9]

No, but it can be sent over encrypted connection. A default 9Front install sets up TLS tunnels for file server access.

[@NicolasLeveille]

@ ah good to know. That wasn’t very clear to me so I wasn’t sure if/which 9front machines were secure in that regard

[@adventuresin9]

I cover some of that in this video kzbin.info/www/bejne/aKnahayqodOkp6M There are already scripts to set up a secure connection and then anything can be sent down them.