On Thu, 15 Sep 2011, ron minnich wrote:
<eeke...@fastmail.fm> wrote:
A virtualizer running on Plan 9 would waste far less time than implementing
enough Linux syscalls to run a Linux distro new enough to run any browser newer
than Opera 9.
That's a very interesting point. Implementing lguest on Plan 9 would
require something like 13 "system calls". Far easier than doing the
near-400 system calls of linux correctly.
But all of these 'solutions' mean running a foreign binary under some sort
of emulation. None of these integrate with the native environment. I.e.
I can't plumb a URL to Firefox running under the linuxulator. (Can I? If
there's a way I can't find it.) And that being the case, how are these
emulated browsers any different from cranking up vncv to an external host
and running the browser there? (I fully expect Eric to leap in here and
point out he has nothing other than Plan9 running :-) Anyone else?)
While it's mildly annoying, I still manage quite well with vncv and
Firefox running on a UNIX host. Said host has u9fs and mounts under /n on
the Plan9 hosts, so it's not that difficult to save things and copy them
into a permanent home on the file server. And it's trivial to code up an
rc script that uses ssh to pass URLs to a remote browser instance.
Wouldn't we be better off rewriting the Plan 9 kernel in Javascript?
--lyndon
