Hello,

technically it is not a problem to install Xorg + some desktop environment on 
SmartOS (in the global zone).

We have a SmartOS-based compute node with /opt/local pkgsrc in place (the OS 
can be optionally installed on hard drive) [1]. We have successfully installed 
and used a minimal fluxbox, icewm and xfce4 desktop environments.
However, the quantity and quality of graphical applications in smartos’ pkgsrc 
is probably low. For example you can install firefox but the binary won’t start.

To use fluxbox you can just do:
$ pkgin install modular-xorg-server xf86-input-keyboard xf86-input-mouse 
xf86-video-vesa xinit xterm fluxbox
$ cat > ~/.xinitrc << EOF
#!/usr/bin/bash
fluxbox
EOF
$ startx

Another cool thing you can do is to create a Linux (K)VM with graphical 
environment and all your favourite apps on your SmartOS host. Then enable 
remote X11 connections [2] in the Linux guest and on SmartOS run a X11 client: 
/opt/local/bin/Xorg -query $DESKTOP_IP :1
It is not an ideal desktop (e.g. you want have access to USB ports in the 
host), but I can imagine that for doing development in Eclipse it would work. A 
CentOS 7 image with Gnome is available here: 
https://images.erigones.org/appliances/contrib-centos7-desktop/
(KVM will not work on AMD)

But there are definitely other illumos distributions, which are more suitable 
for desktops.

Daniel

[1] https://wiki.smartos.org/display/DOC/Installing+pkgin
[2] 
https://github.com/erigones/esdc-factory/blob/master/ansible/roles/contrib-centos7-desktop/tasks/main.yml#L57

> On 27 Jul 2017, at 20:27, a b <[email protected]> wrote:
> 
>> Can SmartOS  be  used  at  all  as  a  workstation  for  web  app
>> development,say  for  java/php development with Eclipse? AFAIK we
>> can use it as a live image booted off CD/USB with  everything  in
>> memory,  except for /opt . This is akin to a liveCD of linux like
>> Knoppix. I do some of my personal web development on illumos  but
>> I  use  XStreamOS  which has a desktop version. So for XStreamOS,
>> apart from the native IPS package set, I have options of Joyent's
>> pkgsrc,OpenCSW or gentoo prefix as package sets.
> 
> Unfortunately not, as SmartOS is a  hypervisor  most  similar  to
> VMware ESXi.
> 
> What you could do is run a joyent-branded zone inside of  SmartOS
> with X libraries and one of the X window managers, but you'd need
> an X server to bring the display back to, defeating  the  purpose
> of running SmartOS as a desktop, since you'd need another desktop
> to do that.
> 
> You can of  course  run  a  web  server  with  PHP  and  do  your
> development on SmartOS in vi(1) or vim(1), or bring an integrated
> development environment's display over to  your  X  server  (your
> desktop).
> 
> SmartOS is a cloud hypervisor for running servers. It's purposely
> designed to do that, and do it well. It's not a desktop operating
> system.
> --
> Empathy is still a core engineering value.
> 

Attachment: signature.asc
Description: Message signed with OpenPGP




-------------------------------------------
smartos-discuss
Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/184463/=now
RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/184463/25769125-55cfbc00
Modify Your Subscription: 
https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=25769125&id_secret=25769125-7688e9fb
Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com

Reply via email to