Some time ago I was not able to resist a hoarding urge and “rescued” an old HP laptop. Pavilion zv5000 (in case you are curious).

I tried a few Linux and BSD incarnations but nothing stuck, primarily due to lack of drivers. And finally I got lucky with Plan 9.

Plan 9 was my first introduction to Unix-like operating systems. I discovered it by accident and was so fascinated with it, that I kept on reading old articles and documentation for it even though I was not really able to put it to much use.

And now, after more than ten years, I suddenly have a laptop and a handful of virtual machines running it. I have to say that prior experience with Unix-like environments is required to get anywhere with it, regardless of what 9fans mailing list has to say.