Yes, BSD is a bit more fractured, but at this point I don’t think we can consider FreeBSD the same operating system as NetBSD, DragonFly, or OpenBSD. There is a lot of cross fertilization, true, but the core kernels are actually quite different under the hood. I know that kernel software is boring for most folks, but I still consider it the heart of an OS.
Most of the illumos distros have what is essentially still the same kernel. Maybe after time they will drift apart to more closely resemble the situation with the BSDs, but I think our community is too small to sustain that. There are a few commercial contributors, but apart from that there only a few hobbyists. (And, if I can speak frankly, only a handful of the hobbyists have shown ability or motivation to work in the kernel.) No, what we have is more like Linux distributions, with some kernel differences (Ubuntu is not the same kernel as RedHat after all, although they are 99+% the same), but mostly differentiated in what they have in userland. Most especially in packaging, but also in administrative tools, etc. (Systemd may have been driving the differences further apart, as Linux distributions look less and less like traditional UNIX.) Some years ago I had an idea to try to create a “core” distribution, sort of a minimalist distro for other distribution builders to enhance or derive from, but also to act as a kind of “minimal OS” for hosting & testing the illumos-gate software. My goal was POSIX compliance, with legacy SunOS compatibility as distinct 2nd case. (For example, I changed the default uname output to reflect that SunOS is no longer meaningful, and frankly in my tree I had changes which made the compile-time environment more like POSIX, and even Linux, than SunOS.) Lots of this was controversial, and I sort of abandoned the effort due to lack of interest, and a realization that I was probably tilting at windmills. The fact that I didn’t have any commercial support behind me, and the primary commercial illumos player (Joyent) had expressed adamant opposition to the effort led to me to realize that my efforts were almost surely fruitless. I think this is unfortunate, as illumos has relegated itself to compatibility with a system that few still use or care about (and the current number is dwindling), and our big “compatibility” play is now the LX zones in SmartOS. I have some ideas for ways to improve illumos and help it remain vital and relevant. Unfortunately, there seems to be no support for most of those ideas from the largest commercial contributors, who have their own agendas. Ultimately, these separate agendas almost guarantee that illumos itself will have to fork into different systems; from what I can see the only other option is for everyone to just accept the leadership of the primary commercial contributor, and be happy with what they provide. I don’t think that is what anyone (including said commercial contributor) really wants though. I’d be willing to work with others on some of these ideas, resuming some of the work I began years ago, but I’ve long since realized that it is both more than I can do alone, and not work I can afford to do for free — since I still have things like a mortgage to pay for. On Fri, Sep 15, 2017 at 8:36 AM Alan Coopersmith < [email protected]> wrote: > On 09/15/17 02:18 AM, Alexander Pyhalov wrote: > > FreeBSD doesn't have this problem. They have different teams, interested > in > > different areas, but still share single code base. > > Except for the folks who have different ideas and work on NetBSD, OpenBSD, > DragonFly, etc. instead. > > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_BSD_operating_systems is a lot > longer > than the list of illumos distros. > > -alan- ------------------------------------------ illumos-discuss Archives: https://illumos.topicbox.com/groups/discuss/discussions/T83f198c8597cf8e3-Mccdcb17006aac12eb5d45329 Powered by Topicbox: https://topicbox.com
