Personally, I have only run 9front on VMs, but my understanding is that 9front will boot on most x86/x86_64 machines. There is also explicit work to keep it running well on RPi hardware, which is what adventuresin9 runs.

For a bit more nitty-gritty, the 9front FQA[0] is worth running through.

[0]:https://fqa.9front.org/fqa3.html

I am having ideas about how I could build a firewall/router using 9p primitives now.

Damnit, I guess I know what I am doing this weekend.