Wow. Illumos / Solaris is still kicking, eh?
Really too bad Solaris didn’t stick around and was so horribly mismanaged by Sun.
Solaris and Vax/VMS is where I started my career decades ago, and still brings back memories.
Really too bad Solaris didn’t stick around and was so horribly mismanaged by Sun.
Solaris and Vax/VMS is where I started my career decades ago, and still brings back memories.
At Oxide, we have our own illumos (in my understanding, you're supposed to lowercase the i) distribution, discussed on HN a while back https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39178521
I'll keep the small "i" in mind as well. :)
It would be interesting to see a little more diversity in common operating systems in the wild though. Linux has pretty much taken over the server space, and iOS/Android have split the more common usage outside that, with what's left of desktop still mostly Windows.
I still think there's opportunity for something like Flutter as a cross-platform library that actually works with multiple backing languages.
OpenIndiana also has the problem that every commercial illumos user is using it for some niche purpose (networking infrastructure, storage appliance, that sort of thing) so it's basically up to a few unpaid volunteers working in their free time to adapt it for general desktop use. I'm not sure what the state of stuff like audio support or accelerated graphics looks like if you're on modern hardware.
So from that standpoint it makes sense that they acquired it. They probably just didn't care about any non-Oracle users.
I wouldn't bet on that. Their Linux distro is a RHEL clone, but they have total control over Solaris.
https://www.zdnet.com/article/sun-set-oracle-closes-down-las...
I guess my question - I honestly have no idea and it's been years since I paid attention to Oracle or Sun's inner workings - is whether they're still developing SPARC hardware? The Google seems to say no, they've abandoned that... so I'm inclined to agree with you guys now.
I don't have a ton of nostalgia left for Sun stuff, but still... what a waste.
Their core reference platform moved from SPARC to Linux + X86 almost a decade ago. They pushed Exadata down everyone's throat at the time with their "it'd be too bad if we have to audit you unless you buy this new hardware" approach.
Sadly it is still years away on ARM and x86, Linux and BSD systems.
Apple OSes don't count for the BSD group I was talking about, because they only took whatever NeXT felt like back at the time, and there have been very few updates other than those required for UNIX certification.
While on Linux, you might be tempted to point out Android, however NDK alone hardly makes it a GNU/Linux system.
That's what I loved about Sun, really. They strive for a leadership role in the UNIX world by actually leading, instead of just trying to dominate. No company is perfect, but Sun was better than most.
I was sad to see them go, but with Windows NT taking over corporate and Linux taking over networking, they just didn't have a place. They kept pushing "The network is the computer" at a time when PCs were cheap. If only they'd held out until the cloud craze hit...
[citation needed]
Reaching feature parity and taking Solaris' market share was an often cited goal by people in the Linux community, and one they achieved.
That said, I don't remember much actual hate directed at Sun in the way that Microsoft got. As far as companies go, Sun was a better member of the UNIX community than most.
Our belief was that Linux would be unlikely (and unwise as the overall system architecture is sufficiently different that it would be hard to port) to take the code. We expected - and encouraged - the concepts to be taken (as with the slab memory allocator).