I use 9front heavily.

Latency is never a problem in my experience unless you're mounting in resources from a different continent, where ssh is slow anyway. Even in those cases, the UX is closer to mosh, since rio remains local.

In general, plan 9 is fast. Compiling all of userspace and the kernel tanker just a couple minutes on my 11th gen Framework. Grepping a large repo also feels closer to ripgrep than gnu grep.

One well-known user runs his home network and automation system all as a 9grid. He even frequently shares details on his YouTube channel adventuresin9[0]. It's binge-worthy IMHO.

It's hard to convey how cohesive the whole system is. It's ridiculous how many things are reduced to trivial shell scripts, and the source code is so darn grokkable, greppable, and small that treating it as documention is actually sensible. Granted, this is almost necessary to become proficient in Plan 9 since there are so few network effects producing StackOverflow answers, blog tutorials etc.

Anyway, I hope you do end up jumping in!

[0]:https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7qFfPYl0t8Cq7auyblZqxA

Interesting. Do you use it on real hardware? Are drivers an issue?

I have an old piece of shit laptop that’s not being used for anything, might be a fun excuse to try it out.