The window manager of Plan 9 from Bell Labs is innovative, but much to dependent on the mouse for my tastes. I want to try out Plan9's other unique features, but if I'm forced to use a mouse to manipulate the screen my user experience will be dramatically diminished.
How do I install another window manager or disable the GUI entirely on Plan9? Is it compatible with X window managers by default? How would I install and use an X11 server if it's not already in use?
What keyboard shortcuts suffice to resize and move windows? I don't like leaving blank space on my screen that only shows a background, to the extent that I've installed a tiling window manager that doesn't resize windows without increasing space allocated to others proportionally. Before installing that I always kept programs maximized or otherwise snapped to the corners of the screen.
I'm very comfortable with having only a TTY terminal if that's the quickest option. Being able to run an X11 window manager (EG Gnome, DWM) or an equivalent is the final goal but just being able to open a terminal window, maximize it, switch which window is showing is an excellent start.
I've read very little Plan9 documentation and stopped experimenting soon after being told to open a terminal by clicking the background with the mouse by the automatically opened introduction file, but I also don't see many web search results on this topic or on stack overflow.
First of all, please try using Plan 9 despite your dislike of mice—neither do you know how much you might like its workflow, nor can you get satisfactory answers without trying.
Plan 9 is very mouse- and graphics-centered. When you log in, the file $home/lib/profile is run, which usually starts the window system, rio(1). If you don’t start rio(1), you get to an interactive instance of the shell, rc(1).
rc(1) doesn’t provide line editing or history or any other such features, which are usually provided by text windows of rio(1). If you work without a window system (there is no such thing as “TTYs” in Plan 9, btw), you won’t be able to even use the backspace key.
If you don’t want to use the mouse, you can do only very little in Plan 9. rio(1) doesn’t provide any keyboard shortcuts, and other programs provide none or just the typical UNIX keyboard shortcuts (^A, ^E, ^W etc., see http://unix-kb.cat-v.org/). There is a port of an older Vim somewhere in the contrib directories, which also can be installed via the unofficial ports tree.
There is a port of X.Org to Plan 9, but note that Plan 9 is not UNIX. You won’t be able to run your beloved UNIX programs on Plan 9, even with an X11 server, without porting them to Plan 9 or to the APE. See http://9p.io/wiki/plan9/x11_installation/index.html.
Tl;dr: Plan 9 is not UNIX and you have to forget everything you know about working on Unices and all the programs you use on Unices to use Plan 9.