I seem to have long range objectives: I believe that Plan 9 could make a better virtualisation host than the current choice for the job and that we ought to sell to the world that it is worth (a) adopting the Plan 9 paradigm for hosted device drivers and (b) developing all future physical device drivers to this paradigm.
Putting it in a different way, consider replacing GRUB with 9LOAD as first step. Then extend 9LOAD so that it somehow contains the correct device drivers for the particular platform and use it to boot the next stage which accesses device drivers Plan 9-style. Now, if we can get the hordes of device driver implementors to focus on this approach, Plan 9's greatest shortcoming (and all other Open Source OSes's) suddenly disappears. Sure, there are efficiency considerations to take into account, as well as the unlikelihood of persuading Lunix developers to switch allegiances, but a concerted effort to head that way is certainly not doomed before even starting, at least not unless I'm subconsciously ignoring some obvious obstacle. This idea has been bugging me ever since rminnich started making noises about Xen and I was tempted to look at it. It bothers me that Xen is designed very much with Linux as its model, not just its primary target. My claim is that a design founded on a Plan 9 foundation would be almost guaranteed to be more successful. That's what I call "faith", I suppose. ++L
--- Begin Message ---I am keen enough to try and get some hardware documentation, and maybe even have a go at codeing a/some drivers for plan9. I only use hardware which plan9 is compatible with so I don't know which way to look. At IWP9 modern, inexpensive SATA cards where mentioned as somwhere we had a gap in our coverage. Is this all we need? Can anyone suggest a card that fits the bill? how about modern laptops, we have a ⅞ finished centrino driver which needs to be finished off, but what graphics chipset is common enough to make it worthwhile chasing the manufacturer, is nvidia still king? Do they have weird interrupt controllers, southbridges etc which will cause problems? As usual I promise nothing but I will do what I can. -Steve
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