
Glendix: Bringing the Beauty of Plan9 to Linux - pmoriarty
http://www.glendix.org
======
anant
(Glendix author here)

The project is mostly dead since I haven't had the time to work on this in
years. If anyone's interested in picking it up and porting it to the latest
kernel version, I'd be happy to help in any way I can!

The interesting bits are mostly in the a.out (plan9's executable format)
loader that enable implementing the small set of plan9 system calls.

~~~
SkyMarshal
One of the most interesting aspects of Plan 9 is the lack of a root user. Did
you ever have any thoughts on the possibility of implementing that in Linux?

~~~
anant
The goal was to bring Plan 9's most useful tools to Linux, rather than modify
Linux to become more Plan 9-ish. Glendix doesn't modify the core or essence of
Linux in any meaningful way (it's more like Wine in that sense), so the
question of removing the root user never came up.

Couple of sub-projects within Glendix that are pretty interesting though are
the synthetic /net filesystem that serves a TCP API, and per-process
namespaces. These are simply in addition to what Linux already provides, so
they don't impact existing Linux applications in any way. Glendix runs just
like any other Linux installation, you just have access to more Plan 9 stuff.

------
SixSigma
For actively developed plan9 tools on unix see Russ Cox's (now of the Go
project) work.

[http://swtch.com/plan9port/](http://swtch.com/plan9port/)

There is also the 9vx project which virtualises x86 using vx32 and then uses
plan9 as an example - [http://swtch.com/9vx/](http://swtch.com/9vx/)

Plan9 also works in vm's such as qemu

~~~
RexRollman
I did this a few weeks ago on an OS X machine and it worked wonderfully. I
installed it to give Sam a try, as I am learning Ed and wanted to compare
them.

I had once hoped that Google would resurrect Plan 9, since they have so many
former AT&T employees on staff. All it really needs it modern drivers, a
wireless stack, and a browser (which they have with Chrome). Alas, it is not
to be.

~~~
stonogo
There is a version of plan 9 with better drivers and wifi:
[https://code.google.com/p/plan9front/](https://code.google.com/p/plan9front/)

I've never used it but I can't imagine it has a browser. The two surviving
browser cores (webkit/blink and gecko) are both utter nightmares of C++ and/or
XUL, neither of which has any runtime support on plan 9.

~~~
SixSigma
Imagine moar, at least three

[http://plan9.stanleylieber.com/linuxemu/](http://plan9.stanleylieber.com/linuxemu/)

As well as Mothra and Abaco.

------
nemasu
Was about to clone till I found out the last commit (README doesn't count) was
on Nov 27, 2009.

~~~
andrewchambers
Last post in Google group is in 2012 asking if it is dead.

------
marktangotango
How does this compare to the plan 9 from user space project?

~~~
Sir_Cmpwn
Plan 9 from user space is a port of userspace programs to other hosts. This
project is an attempt to make the host supportive of the userspace programs,
rather than the other way around. Also, plan 9 from user space is not
abandoned.

