I finally got around to installing an operating system that you may never have heard of. Yes, that is right Plan 9 from Bell Labs. I installed this free operating system on an old Compaq Evo model N180 computer.
This is a laptop with just a Pentium three microprocessor. I will share with you what I learned and the basics to installing this operating system. The first thing you will need is obviously a computer in order to install this UNIX based operating system on.
I was able to install it on an integrated development environment laptop hard drive. Plan nine does support serial advanced technology advancement hard drives. You can use old school serial and personal system two type mice. Also, you can use old school personal system two style keyboards.
This UNIX operating system supports universal serial bus devices, for example universal serial bus flash drives, mice, keyboards, etcetera. I hooked up a three wheel universal serial bus mouse to this old laptop. Also, I just used the built in keyboard.
You can try Plan nine operating system by booting off of a live compact disc read only memory device. Also, you can use this same Plan nine live compact disc read only memory in order to install to your hard drive. Also, you can create a live universal serial bus flash drive instead.
I choose to burn a compact disc read writeable with Plan nine operating system instead of universal serial bus. I was able to successfully boot off the live compact disc read only memory. I choose the default settings but had to specify the video settings correctly.
When I accepted the default extended graphics array, Rio, which is Plan nine's windowing manager it failed to start. I typed in vesa for the video configuration and Rio successfully started. I had to also manually type in vesa when I installed Plan nine on a thirty gigabyte laptop integrated development environment hard drive.
Also, when installing Plan nine operating system I had to choose the default of [browse] and then immediately had to press exit key, during the mountdist portion of the installation. I have no idea why, but the Plan nine operating system installation does not detect the distibution path. Thankfully, I read through the documentation and figured this out.
By accepting the default [browse] option, this allows you to browse the installation media. However, you do not want to change to any directories, otherwise this will change the mountdist path. If you do move around the installation media file structure, make sure you return back to where you began.
I thought this was not necessary and a bit of and odd way in order to tell Plan nine operating system where to mount installation files from. These two revelations, both vesa and typing exit when selecting [browse] saved me potentially a lot of time. I was eventually able to get Plan nine operating system installed successfully.
You will need to perform these main categories:
* configfs: choose file system type
* partdisk: edit partition table
* prepdisk: create partition table
* fmtfossil: format file system
* mountfs: mount file system
* configdisg: choose installtion source
* mountdist: mount installation source
* copydist: copy files to hard disk
I referred to Plan 9 from Bell Labs official documentation and this how to install Plan nine operating system from a Bell Labs blog post. I was able to add a user account and create a home folder.
I was then able to obtain a local internet protocol address using dynamic host configuration protocol. However, I was not able to get domain name server addresses to resolve to their Internet protocol addresses correctly. I could ping out to the Internet using an internet protocol address.
I learned how to add, resize, delete, and move windows. I learned how to use a sam editor. However, I could not figure out how to save changes to files.
Even after installing Plan nine operating system, you can use the default account by typing in glenda when prompted in order to enter the default of [user]. Glenda is a built in account with a home folder already created. Also, four windows are already configured for you.
These windows are labeled meter, date, readme file, and email file. If you want to just open a terminal window, you will want to right click the background and choose Add. Your mouse cursor will turn into a cross +.
You will want to right click and then move your mouse in order to configure how big you want this window. You will now see term% |. This is your command prompt in Plan nine operating system.