OpenIndiana Hipster 2021.04 Released For This Solaris/Illumos-Based OS

[phoronix]

Phoronix: OpenIndiana Hipster 2021.04 Released For This Solaris/Illumos-Based OS

While the popularity of Solaris may be waning, OpenIndiana continues ticking in 2021 as the open-source platform based on Illumos that was born out of the former OpenSolaris state...

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=OpenIndiana-2021.04

[MadeUpName]

While the popularity of Solaris may be waning

That immediately got me thinking of the Monty Python Dead parrot sketch.

[skeevy420]

Oxymoron -- Indiana Hipster

[pracedru]

It's kinda sad that it isn't used more.
Its a real unix system and it works pretty well actually.

Open source OS'es that actually work are few and far on between.

[kloczek]

It's kinda sad that it isn't used more.

Please speak for yourself

[Mez']

It's kinda sad that it isn't used more.
Its a real unix system and it works pretty well actually.

Open source OS'es that actually work are few and far on between.

Could you share your experience? AMD drivers? How good is the support in general? Which DE? Is it lagging behind in terms of version for apps, system, DE?
I remember trying OpenSolaris about 12 years ago and I still have a positive bias towards it. OpenIndiana being its spiritual successor...

[phoronix_is_awesome]

OpenIndiana used to be the distro to go to when Oracle closed source Solaris and you needed to use ZFS root. Now ZFS root is freely available for many alternatively better distros: FreeBSD has it, Ubuntu MATE Linux has it. ZFS root is now available to Ubuntu MATE Linux during installation phase, and at the same time offers the software ecosystem of Linux that Solaris is still behind, so the switch has been done. Solaris is such a good OS, it is a shame that Oracle chose to not support it as a good open source OS. Ubuntu LTS Server is still not offering ZFS root during installation phase requiring custom scripts. I wished that Ubuntu Server LTS would offer mirrored ZFS root during installation phase like the FreeBSD installer.

Use Ubuntu MATE. ZFS root+ Xanmod edge kernel + ernstp mesa almost stable PPA rocks for a desktop environment. (On a side note, you need to stay pretty updated OpenZFS version via the http://ppa.launchpad.net/jonathonf/zfs/ubuntu PPA, otherwise, you download the Xanmod edge kernel too new and the included ZFS package might not compile against latest kernels, and you end up with unbootable ZFS root. I usually double check it with sudo apt reinstall zfs-dkms to make sure the openzfs dkms module recompiled against the newest kernel without issue, and triple check it with Grub Customizer and make sure it displays linux_zfs under the boot entry)

[jacob]

It's kinda sad that it isn't used more.
Its a real unix system and it works pretty well actually.

Open source OS'es that actually work are few and far on between.

Maybe it's because no-one cares about a "real unix system". People care about a system that runs the apps they actually need and supports their hardware.

[kpedersen]

Maybe it's because no-one cares about a "real unix system". People care about a system that runs the apps they actually need and supports their hardware.

Think of real UNIX in a similar way to the doomsday vault for seeds. If a plague wipes out our current operating systems, we still have a pristine solid base to restart from.

Potential plagues (depending on your viewpoint) are:

• IBM / Redhat's systemd
• Wayland (though X11 is a POSIX spec, not UNIX)
• Microsoft's wsl
• Rust in the kernel

So whilst no-one cares about UNIX. We keep coming back and copying from it.

[pracedru]

Could you share your experience? AMD drivers? How good is the support in general? Which DE? Is it lagging behind in terms of version for apps, system, DE?
I remember trying OpenSolaris about 12 years ago and I still have a positive bias towards it. OpenIndiana being its spiritual successor...

I have only tried it in a VM a few times. And it is a bit old fashioned, but it works ok.
Considering how much work there is in making an OS. How many thousands of man hours.
How come the IT industry is so single minded that only so few OS'es are actually used?
Just look at the gigantic amount work it is to replace X11 with Wayland.
How much work there is in SystemD, Upstart and whatever it is that Devuan is working on.
Here is an OS that actually works and Its open source.