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

Combine multiple Truetype font files for complete Unicode coverage.

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

Text shaping for Devanagari script using NotoSansDevanagari-Regular.ttf.

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

This is a capture from a project I'm still hard at work on, some of you likely already know what it is.

Color emoji without gradients.

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

Note: Noto Color emoji needs Color Bitmap Data (CBDT) support.

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

I have been working on a tool that uses Plan 9 to mount any local machine as a folder. Any remote machine becomes a folder. There is no need for rsync, scp it is over TLS 1.3 and 9P2000.
Would love your feedback. Link is in the comment.

Hello, i have and issue with plan9: my timezone UTC+5 was not in plan9 installation, so how can i set it now? I selected +5:30 last time because it is the closest to 5:00

Yesterday, I was on-stream with Nichtderweisheit at LinuxGuides.de. Here's the link to the VOD.

The whole video is in German only.

We talked about Plan 9, and I showed a few things on a 9front system, live. During the preparation phase, I was actually kinda surprised that 9front now works almost flawlessly inside Hyper-V (yes, I streamed a Windows desktop to a linux community).