I don't think they will like Plan9 if file based everything is a turn off.

Did you know the Go language supports Plan9? You can create a binary from any system using GOOS=plan9 with amd64 and i386 supported. You might need to disable CGO and use libraries that don't have operating system specifics though. You can even bootstrap Go from it provided you have the SDK.

Incidentally 9Front is a modern fork of Plan9.