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

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  • #11
    Originally posted by pracedru View Post
    Its a real unix system
    I know this!

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    • #12
      Originally posted by kpedersen View Post

      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.
      I don't see systemd, wayland or rust in the kernel as "plagues" but as long overdue efforts to remediate some of UNIX's worst flaws. There is nothing within wayland or the rust compiler that could somehow wipe out existing systems out of existence, except if you mean that those systems will of course exist but will no longer be (or already aren't) UNIX. I don't think it's a bad thing at all; personally I never got the fascination with UNIX and the belief that a teletype emulator and a set of dumb tools that could never properly work together is forever the last word in OS design.

      Hypothetically, if Linux with its systemd and wayland was somehow wiped out of existence, the idea that we would rollback everything to get back to UNIX and live happily ever after is a major fallacy anyway (or wishful thinking, depending how you look at it). The often quoted meme "those who don't understand UNIX philosophy are doomed to badly reimplement it" can be interpreted in a very interesting way, which is IMHO closer to the truth that what its anonymous author ever meant: on one hand there are those who understand UNIX with all its fundamental deficiencies, bad ideas and their negative impact, and they have moved on. On the other hand there are those who don't understand that, and those still insist on following the UNIX model and always want to reimplement it wherever they go.

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      • #13
        Originally posted by jacob View Post
        Maybe it's because no-one cares about a "real unix system".
        It is pretty safe to say that most do care.

        Originally posted by jacob View Post
        People care about a system that runs the apps they actually need and supports their hardware.
        That is what a real UNIX is in the 21st century and for the most part includes Linux distributions and MacOS. UNICES people use in the real world not some abstraction they tend to idealize, mythologize about, have fond memories of, feel good about, reminisce and otherwise never use.


        Originally posted by kpedersen View Post

        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
        I would also add ZFS which is against the UNIX philosophy and is included in the OI and freebsd kernels.

        Last edited by dreich; 02 May 2021, 08:44 AM.

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        • #14
          Even in it's day, Solaris was rarely interesting. It rose to popularity largely because of price. not that it wasn't a capable OS or anything, it certainly got a lot of jobs done and even in its zombie state still does... but the future of Solaris is not to be a great, interesting, or even relevant platform... it is to incrementally progress in ways that keep legacy software running that for whatever reason hasn't been replaced by a modern alternative running on a modern operating system.

          Just go to oracle.com and click their Products menu, notice how Solaris is not listed but Linux is. What more do you need to know? It's dead, Jim... But enough of an enthusiastic community exists to keep nudging it forward, the same way so many ultra niche operating systems keep nudging forward even from much more humble beginnings. As an ex-Solaris guy, I clearly can say I'm personally far more interested in something like Haiku OS than I am in anything related to Solaris in 2021.

          Edit: ZFS being a fairly notable exception to Solaris having a continuing legacy

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          • #15
            Originally posted by pracedru View Post
            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.
            Once a Unix system goes open source is it really Unix any more? Even though vast amounts of open source software was developed on Unix, if there was one term to define Unix it was "proprietary" which is why they all dead.

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            • #16
              Originally posted by dreich View Post
              It is pretty safe to say that most do care.
              What do you base that on? I would say most people don't give a *** about which OS they use; they just need application software XYZ and will use whichever OS that software runs on.

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              • #17
                Originally posted by jacob View Post

                What do you base that on?
                Numbers. Once people learn the standard UNIX practices and workflows of a "teletype emulator and a set of dumb tools that could never properly work together" they want to retain that knowledge and transfer it to whatever system they decide to use. For multitudinous many reasons, those people do not want to throw all this experience away which is one of the reasons why companies like msft created WSL in the first place.

                Originally posted by jacob View Post
                I would say most people don't give a *** about which OS they use
                That is because you are talking about most people and they don't care about computers other than their smartphones. This discussion involves people who care about computers and have developed a preference and proficiency with their tools / software.

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                • #18
                  Why a specialized nische operating system and not an ☝️ general purpose OS and also open source, GNU/Solaris-like 👌

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                  • #19
                    Originally posted by MadeUpName View Post
                    Once a Unix system goes open source is it really Unix any more?
                    I am not sure what you are asking. Are you saying that FreeBSD isn't open source?

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                    • #20
                      Originally posted by dreich View Post

                      Numbers. Once people learn the standard UNIX practices and workflows of a "teletype emulator and a set of dumb tools that could never properly work together" they want to retain that knowledge and transfer it to whatever system they decide to use. For multitudinous many reasons, those people do not want to throw all this experience away which is one of the reasons why companies like msft created WSL in the first place.
                      So once again, where are those numbers? Where do you see the masses who live and swear by "sed/grep/awk/vi"? Not in the mobile or desktop spaces obviously; not on corporate servers (that's all Windows Server and/or cloud and microservices) and not in data centers (that's where Kubernetes, Ansible etc. reign). I happen to see a lot of different clients in the course of my work; the UNIX culture might be living on with a bunch of enthusiasts and hobbyists but in the real world it has been extinct for a long time. Msft didn't create WSL for the privilege to endure the bugs of "vi" or have to deal with the inextricable mess that is variable substitution and separator handling in the *nix shell. WSL is for cloud and container-based application developers because MS finally accepted that Linux (note I'm not saying UNIX) owns that market and they didn't want developers to install Linux distros on their workstations. In fact in a large part they created WSL for themselves because Linux is now essential to their own Azure infrastructure.

                      Originally posted by dreich View Post
                      That is because you are talking about most people and they don't care about computers other than their smartphones. This discussion involves people who care about computers and have developed a preference and proficiency with their tools / software.
                      Speak for yourself. You may find it unbelievable but it's perfectly possible to care about computers AND not think much of UNIX. In fact I have a poor opinion of UNIX precisely because I care very much about computers. I also have a lot more respect for those who understand that other users don't care about their computer or their OS and care about getting their own priorities catered for, rather than people who have an ideological fixation on one particular tech without being able to actually explain it in terms of costs & benefits, and who believe that they have to "educate" users about it.

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