On Mon, Dec 01, 2014 at 09:00:46AM +0200, lu...@proxima.alt.za wrote:
> > The guy in front of the console should authenticate as a normal user
> > and then only be allowed to access his own environment (no direct
> > control over hw, etc).
>
> The guy is not in front of the "console", he has physical and
> therefore unrestricted access to all the resources in the terminal.
But, IMHO, this is precisely the difference between Unix and Plan9.
In Unix, the console or X11 are dumb terminals. There are only
no-computing-capabilities devices to interact; they are no terminals as
in Plan9.
This is why X11 has put the network in the wrong place. The X11 "server"
is just a remote graphic card; it is mimicking with graphical devices
what has been done with text devices (tty). In X11, all processing,
including handling the graphical menus, the display, is done by
the client. While on Plan9, the processing of the data can be done
in a CPU tightly coupled with a file server, while the handling of
what is displayed (menus for example) can be done on the terminal.
In Unix, consoles and X display are just remote devices to interact,
while the processing node they are connected to can be out of reach.
--
Thierry Laronde <tlaronde +AT+ polynum +dot+ com>
http://www.kergis.com/
http://www.arts-po.fr/
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