With Christmas coming up I'm looking to hopefully take advantage of the usual deals on laptops on ebay during the holiday season to get a nice machine to run 9front/Plan9 on that I can use for many years to come. I've read the FQA on hardware support but it's just easier sometimes to ask what other people are using.

I had my eye on a Thinkpad X220 or comparable machine but prices have really gone up since I last looked into purchasing Thinkpads of that vintage. Here are my must haves and wants. I'm flexible on some of these:

1) Intel CPU / iGPU and ability to upgrade the CPU

I need something Intel because I already have a Thinkpad running AMD CPU/iGPU. I'm not very fond of Intel but I plan to use this machine for also running Open/FreeBSD for checking some code I write for those OSs against the intel drivers. Faster CPU the better since I plan on building a lot of software on this machine (don't mind if I have to buy it and put it in myself).

2) Would really like mechanical keyboard/old school Thinkpad keyboard

Main reason I was eyeing an X220 or similar vintage. I'm open to buying a slightly newer Thinkpad that I could swap the old keyboard into.

3) 16:10, 16:9 or 4:3/5:4 screen.

Preferably the option to get the 16:10 so I can test widescreen/HD stuff without having to live in 16:9 full time but I actually prefer a "square" screen. I don't care if I need to get this on the aftermarket and swap it in myself. Just want to know if those are still available for some of these older thinkpads and if the prices aren't insane for those parts. Higher nits/better color would be preferred of course. I know a lot of people do screen updates on these older Thinkpads but I don't know what's out there in that respect these days.

4) Real RAM slots / ability to have at least 16GB of RAM

CPU doesn't have to be beefy but I'd prefer something where I can get at least 16GB of RAM. Even more would be better. Current Thinkpad has 32GB and while I never really fill it up sometimes I need to build some big software or fire up a lot of VMs. Also like having option to use RAM disk. Maybe could live with 8GB of RAM here.

5) Coreboot/Libreboot would be nice along with the ability to get around any hardware black/whitelist that comes with the machine by default

6) Ability to add second internal storage device/SSD

7) Multiple batteries / ability to remove battery without taking case apart.

8) Well supported wifi drivers/chipset (across OpenBSD and 9front)

That's it for the most part. It doesn't have to be a Thinkpad but I don't know of any other line of laptops that are 1) supported well by 9front and 2) tick the above boxes.

I'm not looking to spend more than $200-$250 on the laptop itself (before upgrades/mods). Cheaper the better. Maybe I could spend $350 on this. But some of the prices I'm seeing lately are a bit extreme for what these older thinkpads are.

Thanks for any advice you guys might have on this. Looking for a good machine I can hack on for years to come.

Play Youtube videos directly in Plan 9 via Invidious.

Details: https://lifeofpenguin.blogspot.com/2026/10/plan-9-play-invidious-video.html

Hi there,

I try to convert an old QNAP 212 to be a 9front fileserver.

The Hardware is actually quite accessable. The connection via UART went smooth. It has a Marvell 88F6281cpu, ARMv5TE. I compiled for ARM the 9plug file and loaded it on the Machine using u-boot (via minicom) on the QNAP.

Now I try to setup the plan9.ini (actual name is the QNAPs MAC address). I read, that somewhere should be an example-kw file. I was not able to find it.

It's my first time trying a hack like this. Could somebody recommend me a good source/ tutotrial. Or just the man page and a lot of knowledge?

Best regards.

I just saw this, and I think it's really cool. I had to share it because it's not the kind of thing a lot of people geek out over. I'm not super knowledgeable on Plan 9 (despite having played with it now and then through the years), so I'm not sure how useful it is, but had to share.

It's an alternative to things like VNC, designed to minimize bandwidth, and allow interaction via wayland over p9 to a linux server and render on the Plan 9 system.

Performance looked really smooth in the demo. Just thought this was cool that I had to share :) I didn't see this when I searched for a post before, so apologies if it's a dupe of some kind. Cheers!

https://www.cybersavior.dev/site/shukumei.html

getting this question out of the way now. how much was coded by llm? the L2 normalization function was modified from local llm offering because looking up the algo on wikipedia was annoying when i just wanted psudocode. everything else was written by hand. some debugging was done with llm assistance but, frankly llm's ability to reason about the logic of the design is trash. 9 out of 10 bugs it trys to claim exist are it failing to understand what actually happens.

libhnsw. https://www.cybersavior.dev/site/hnsw.html based on the python implementation. separating "pythonisms" from "actual algo" is annoying. This is probably the "most useful" part of this project to anyone other than me. It will handle nearest neighbor finding for any data types that can be made to compare by magnitude distance. not only for embedding vectors. (i don't think it needs saying to people who understand what it does, but if all the values are moving constantly this is not useful for finding nearest points, for example moving objects in a game world with each object being in the graph - you are not going to get good results unless you toss the whole graph and rebuild it every time. ) - potential other "real" uses : mapping rgba hexcodes to named colors, finding nearest star to a point in the sky, etc.

what's it for? erp.

tool calling? no.

is it finished? i have many planned "commands" to control the "simulation". none of them are started yet. controlling cohorts is done through modifying save files. so... no. it's not done.

does it work? it allows long term conversations with AI personalities, constructs their prompts based on their past interactions. "work" is a loaded phrase. Some models get confused about what is "now" and what is "past". many local setups will find this harness design overly engineered, heavy, slow. most doing rp type conversation would be better off with just a ring buffer that jumps (rather than sliding turn by turn, something like when hitting a high ctx use, trim the buffer down by several turns to a "low" ctx mark, then let it fill again (this to keep cache reuse higher when slow prompt reading is significant.))

why 9front instead of webui? :/

how do i run it? it's hardcoded for llama.cpp and my network. read the code and change it to match you llama.cpp setup in your own network. if that's beyond your ability... then oh well.

what's the point? why? ... erp ... i just want my yandare waifu to remember dumb things i said months ago and be able to make fun of me about it later. if this seems like an over engineered solution to this problem, fine. if you want the full "philosophy" of it: https://www.cybersavior.dev/site/clanker.html https://www.cybersavior.dev/site/shukumei_loading.html

also no i won't apologize. and no i don't think this is out of alignment with everything else i've said about vibe coding and llms here. feel free to disagree.

FIXED. hello, does anyone knows how to fix that error? I already made $home/lib/git/config as git9 manual page says, but this error still appears

I was playing around with Purgatorio and with i was trying to see if i can connect drawterm to Purgatorio because yes wanted to see if i can mount the filesystem into Linux, but when i tried what i get is `mount: /mnt/inferno: fsconfig() failed: Unknown error 526`

(the nmap was to be 100% sure that the port was in fact beign used)

I tried changing the 9P version but with all 3 gives the same error.

But i know that i can mount 9P filesystem because i can mount (over the network) the filesystem of the 9front that i have in a virtual machine.

Also i can mount Purgatorio filesystem in 9front

and so with that i tried the srv implementation of plan9port and it worked

and with that i could finally mound the filesystem using the trans=unix option (ignore the port=6666 i forgot to remove it)

Now my 2 questions are:

1. can i use drawterm with Purgatorio? (optional to answer)

2. why can't directly mount Purgatorio filesystem on Linux over the network?, am i doing something wrong?

That's youtube on void linux in (4-cores) vmx in plan9 in qemu on my void linux.

I had a lot of LLM quota to consume in the last 2/3 days, so I forked 9front and "got":

• integrated the Russ Cox's Diskless QEMU boot
• Multicored vmx, with xAPIC/x2APIC, improved TSC and scheduling, VirGL graphics and VirtIO
• Native accelerated 3D: a VirtIO GPU driver with a file interface, libgpu for VirGL, and TinyGL for a classic OpenGL subset. Currently targets QEMU; includes the Utah teapot and glgears demos
• Native raylib and raygui, using rio, libdraw and /dev/audio
• Native Neverball and Neverputt, plus Arkanoid, Asteroids and Missile Commander on raylib

If you have any question I can forward them to my LLM.

I do only accept LLM-written contributions.

Edit:
https://github.com/paolomarrone/generated9

Peace
Paolo

Hi guys, i'm a early adolescent teenager whos interested in 9front, ive been using it, and i want to ask you guys, how do i get custom fonts on 9front? Also i cant really find any early adolescent teenagers from 12-15 that use 9front or illumos.

Poking the VGA card.

Details: https://lifeofpenguin.blogspot.com/2026/10/plan-9-poking-pci-hardware.html

I recently updated objective 9c with MVC style views for file trees, so you can display data depending on internal state of the application. If you are wondering why it matters, i've put together an irc client that uses this (and a few other things that are not rolled into main - yet). The client is still being worked on but it works (mostly, still plenty of bugs). As usual: It's 9p, or nothing.

Spell checking using spell(1).

Details: https://lifeofpenguin.blogspot.com/2026/09/plan-9-code-assist-rio.html

Previously, and long before agents, I implemented a remoting layer for acme [1] that let me work on remote Linux servers from my Mac. Ever since I've been thinking about what an environment designed for this purpose might look like.

Apex is that attempt: 

https://mariusae.github.io/apex/

Apex aims to be a modern take on acme that:

1) Implements a true client-server architecture through a replicated log;
2) Modernizes the UI, and adds a few (very few!) new keyboard affordances;
3) Retains the 3-button UX, but also treats laptops with touchpads as first-class;
4) Adds two new window types: terminal emulators (because: agents), and web views (because with these you can render nearly anything), while still being fully programmable.

It has been working very well for me. It brings me joy. I use it most of the day, every day, and typically maintain sessions across 2-3 different remote Linux servers for development.

Apex ships with some useful tools (these are built entirely against its public API--Apex admits defeat and exposes a "modern" API instead of fileservers--but are packaged with Apex for convenience):
- an LSP adapter
- an agent tool (which can monitor agents and notify you when they require user input)
- a preview tool for common formats like markdown, svg, etc.

-m.

[1] https://9fans.topicbox.com/groups/9fans/T5addc17a0e19cd91-Mcb2e189b0570c6833f195230

This is part 2 of my vision of Plan 9 as an Infinity Notebook. This focuses on the developer tools.

Details: https://lifeofpenguin.blogspot.com/2026/09/plan-9-code-assist-rio.html

Details: https://lifeofpenguin.blogspot.com/2026/09/plan-9-code-assist-rio.html

Details: https://lifeofpenguin.blogspot.com/2026/08/plan-9-emoji.html

Code outline, Call tree and jump to symbol.

Details: https://lifeofpenguin.blogspot.com/2026/09/plan-9-code-assist.html

Details: https://lifeofpenguin.blogspot.com/2026/09/plan-9-code-assist.html

Insert emoji in the active window using a picker (uses /dev/cons).

Details: https://lifeofpenguin.blogspot.com/2026/08/plan-9-emoji.html

In an effort to provide a distraction from the sheer number of posts on here that seem to just be people pointing LLM's at software and asking them to port them to plan9 C I would like to pick the community's brain about 9p.

I'm starting a masters program soon and looking for some good independent research ideas and I've been noodling with playing with implementations of 9p that would, ideally, increase the protocols speed and performance. At this stage I'm looking at seeing if 9p and QUIC could be integrated.

What do you guys think about 9p? What's the good, what's the bad, what's comfy, what's not, etc.

For me personally, I think the idea of a single human understandable interface to an entire network of computers is very appealing. File operations are easy to understand and a very powerful abstraction as well as allowing for a great deal of flexibility in how users might want to integrate machines. Modern computing is a mess of abstractions on top of abstractions and the idea that a distributed system can be built on something that closely tracks fundamental computing concepts is appealing.

Details: https://lifeofpenguin.blogspot.com/2026/09/plan-9-devanagari-input-with-kbmap.html

Simple key visualizer using kbdfs, awk and statusmsg.

Details: https://lifeofpenguin.blogspot.com/2026/09/plan-9-key-visualizer.html

Details: https://lifeofpenguin.blogspot.com/2026/08/plan-9-emoji.html

Details: https://lifeofpenguin.blogspot.com/2026/08/plan-9-emoji.html