Reading through the archives of the Plan 9 mailing list at http://9fans.net/archive you can follow along with the progress of Linux and the web as they completely displaced and then decimated operating systems research, culminating in famous Pike's utah2000 paper. You see each casual user show up on the mailing list demanding "modern" features, arguing about the license, screeching about security "holes" they don't understand, before, ultimately, declaring that they are retreating to Linux (or, later, Mac OSX), where at least they can play Flash games and login to turbotax.com and watch Youtube videos.