# Oracle Solaris is Unix but not easy to use



## TomHsiung (Feb 11, 2018)

I could install transmission by `pkg install transmission` but it appeared not to be the transmission-daemon and there is no settings.json file.

Finally, I got to know that there is no transmission-daemon for Oracle Solaris.

However, advantages of Oracle Solaris include built-in wget, nano editor, cups service, rsync, and so on.

Tom


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## scottro (Feb 11, 2018)

I think Solaris is (gradually?) being phased out by Oracle, if it hasn't already been killed.   There is the Illumos fork of it, as well as OpenIndiana.

Back in the late 90's, early 2000's, Solaris was probably the Unix to use if you wanted a Unix or Unix like system job.  While it may have more builtin, so do most Linux distributions, and the packages you mention, as well as many others, are very easily added with pkg install on FreeBSD, so I'm not sure I'd consider that a major advantage. (By the way, though wget isn't included, there is a builtin fetch command which can do much of what wget does. )


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## TomHsiung (Feb 11, 2018)

Yes. I found Solaris is not good for home use. I want to build a video streaming serve. About to install FreeNAS.

Tom


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## ljboiler (Feb 11, 2018)

There is separate net-p2p/transmission-daemon.


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## TomHsiung (Feb 11, 2018)

And MacOS is a certificated Unix system. Luckly, I could install latest macOS on my DIY PC. Maybe to use macOS as a server is a good idea.

Tom


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## k.jacker (Feb 11, 2018)

You are talking about Freenas, Solaris and MacOS as a server on a FreeBSD forum. Wouldn’t a FreeBSD server be the most obvious?


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## robroy (Feb 11, 2018)

Yeah, FreeBSD's known for being fairly good at that kind of job (a comical under-statement).


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## Deleted member 9563 (Feb 12, 2018)

TomHsiung said:


> advantages of Oracle Solaris include built-in wget, nano editor, cups service, rsync, and so on


Surely you're not implying that it is difficult for you to install those! Having them pre-installed is hardly relevant. I am assuming that if you're considering such things as Oracle Solaris you have basic skills to type a short command, but if not, I apologize. We'll gladly help you here.


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## scottro (Feb 12, 2018)

Apple seems to be decreasing their support for their server app, (don't remember where I saw that, but if you google it, you should be able to find references to it.)

FreeBSD can do these things you wish. It may take more work (and may not, depending upon which of these systems you want to use).  If you get Apple running on non Apple software, it's often fragile, and any upgrade may break it.  FreeNAS is good, Solaris is no longer supported, though as I mentioned above, there are alternatives. 

With no argument intended, if you think one of these will do the job better for you than FreeBSD, that's fine.  Even posting why you find them better for your needs is fine, and possibly useful to the next one who comes along.


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## TomHsiung (Feb 12, 2018)

Let me try OpenIndiana a little bit.

Tom


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## Cthulhux (Feb 12, 2018)

I find Solaris (especially its illumos descendant) interesting because it is the only free SysV Unix in existence. I wish my WiFi chip was supported yet - it would be an awesome daily driver.


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## TomHsiung (Feb 12, 2018)

scottro said:


> Apple seems to be decreasing their support for their server app, (don't remember where I saw that, but if you google it, you should be able to find references to it.)
> 
> FreeBSD can do these things you wish. It may take more work (and may not, depending upon which of these systems you want to use.  If you get Apple running on non Apple software, it's often fragile, and any upgrade may break it.  FreeNAS is good, Solaris is no longer supported, though as I mentioned above, there are alternatives.
> 
> With no argument intended, if you think one of these will do the job better for you than FreeBSD, that's fine.  Even posting why you find them better for your needs is fine, and possibly useful to the next one who comes along.



Actually, my hackintosh is very stable. The only thing you need to be caution is to follow the guide provided by Tonymacx86.com

I built my hackintosh based on tonymacx86's building guide and most of the hardwares were natively supported by macOS.

Tom


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## priyadarshan (Feb 25, 2018)

TomHsiung said:


> Let me try OpenIndiana a little bit.
> Tom



TomHsiung Let us know how it is going with OpenIndiana. I was always curious about illumos vs *BSD differences.


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## Cthulhux (Feb 25, 2018)

There was a reddit discussion about exactly this not too long ago:


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## priyadarshan (Feb 25, 2018)

Thank for linking to that. I guess the only way is to install an illumos-based OS and try it out. I was interested mainly in the "feel". I remember, coming from Linux, the first time I sat at a FreeBSD shell, I said to myself, "Wow, this is _so_ much better". But it was difficult to point _what_ was different.


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## Cthulhux (Feb 25, 2018)

OpenIndiana incorporates more GNU than FreeBSD - I guess it's somewhere in between.


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## priyadarshan (Feb 25, 2018)

Thank you, license is indeed an important part of the "feeling at home". For some reason, although I like GNU's tools, I am not enamoured of GPL's weltanschauung.


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## sko (Feb 26, 2018)

priyadarshan said:


> Thank for linking to that. I guess the only way is to install an illumos-based OS and try it out. I was interested mainly in the "feel". I remember, coming from Linux, the first time I sat at a FreeBSD shell, I said to myself, "Wow, this is _so_ much better". But it was difficult to point _what_ was different.



For me it was the _MUCH_ more structured and "engineered" feel of FreeBSD compared to linux. This starts with simple things like filesystem-hygiene which has become even worse on linux since systemd scatters stuff in places where they definitely _don't_ belong (e.g. executables under /lib).
Also the integration and interoperability of basic tools and technologies (ZFS) is something that just isn't there on linux and it makes working with the system so much easier and more efficient.

These points are even more true for illumos - at least that's my experience. We're using smartOS for virtualization since ~2 years and I'm running omniOS in a few VMs, mainly for testing. Lots of services I previously ran in jails are now running in zones (dhcp, DNS, radius, ldap....), mainly because migration between hosts is much easier than for jails.
Tools like vmadm/zoneadm (and its siblings) or dladm are very powerful; crossbow is just awesome and even for very sophisticated setups still quite easy to manage compared to e.g. netflow.
SMF is quite a beast, but I've started to like some aspects of it. Like other tools on illumos it has a quite steep learning curve, but after some adjustment period it really makes sense. One thing I just recently discovered and immediately fell in love with, is the ability to get the path of the logfile for a service with `svcs -L <service>` - no more searching where a service puts its logfile or how it is named (yes, looking at you BIND...), just do `less `svcs -L pkgsrc/bind``.


Regarding Oracle Solaris: Essentially all engineering teams for Solaris' key technologies left after the Oracle invasion or at the latest when Oracle re-closed the Solaris source. All further development of the OS and technologies like ZFS then happened outside of Oracle. So for me it's not only an ethical decision not to use Oracle Solaris, but also a purely technical - especially when it comes to ZFS. You just can't use Oracle ZFS properly with any other OS - it's a one-way-ticket if you import a OpenZFS pool in Oracle.
We're backing up our VM snapshots from smartOS to a FreeBSD storage server and NAS, which _just works™_ A colleague is/was running a Linux desktop with ZFS and was also backing up to the same Servers and still uses his data pool with TrueOS. My storage server at home was migrated from an old debian linux installation to FreeBSD (and omniOS for a few weeks of testing) basically by just exporting/importing the storage pool.
Another thing I'm looking forward to is the bhyve port to smartOS/illumos. Combined with the ongoing development of vmadm for FreeBSD by ProjectFiFo it might become a real thing to seamlessly migrate VMs between FreeBSD and smartOS even using the same tools on both systems!


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## hotaronohanako (Feb 26, 2018)

scottro said:


> I think Solaris is (gradually?) being phased out by Oracle, if it hasn't already been killed.   There is the Illumos fork of it, as well as OpenIndiana.
> 
> Back in the late 90's, early 2000's, Solaris was probably the Unix to use if you wanted a Unix or Unix like system job.  While it may have more builtin, so do most Linux distributions, and the packages you mention, as well as many others, are very easily added with pkg install on FreeBSD, so I'm not sure I'd consider that a major advantage. (By the way, though wget isn't included, there is a builtin fetch command which can do much of what wget does. )





scottro said:


> I think Solaris is (gradually?) being phased out by Oracle, if it hasn't already been killed.   There is the Illumos fork of it, as well as OpenIndiana.


Well I think at this point is not so much difference from what, the Core Team is been doing with the whole freebsd project.!  these guys with their actions have been phasing out freebsd for years..!


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## priyadarshan (Feb 26, 2018)

sko Thank you for inspiring post and the details, I will check smartOS out, if not for "touching" first-hand a bit of a significant part of Unix history.

In the Reddit thread linked above, there is mention of easily running virtualized Windows, or any OS, like FreeBSD, Ubuntu, etc.

Would you know if it is possible at all to connect to such virtualized OS via VNC, from the same smartOS running instance?

That is, does smartOS allow to install, even in the global zone, some sort of X11 manager, so to use a VNC client from there and connect to multiple OS instances running on same machine, without having to connect from a second client computer?

That would be very cool indeed.


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## priyadarshan (Feb 26, 2018)

Link to that post (I know, it is off topic, but luckily this thread seems already marked in "off-topic" section): https://ispire.me/how-to-create-smartos-windows-vm/


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## sko (Feb 26, 2018)

smartOS is basically a stateless hypervisor. It isn't installed on disk; you only put the image on an SD-card or USB-key. Configuration is stored on the pool, basically in a single file. So you can't and really shouldn't run X11 in the global zone of a smartOS host. Just use any VNC client on a host that has access to the admin interface of the smartOS host (usually a management-VLAN).
If you need more of a general-purpose host, you should go with omniOS (very lightweight base installation, great for server use but can also be set up for desktop use) or OpenIndiana (more biased towards desktop use).

Installing Windows in a VM is still quite a PITA even today; mainly because it still has absolutely no support for paravirtualized devices OOTB. You still have to fiddle around with driver CDs (images) like it's 1999 

For any other OS (BSDs, illumos, various linuxes) there are prebuild images available via `imgadm`. Instead of a bloated and systemd-poised ubuntu you should have a look at Alpine in LX-Zones if you absolutely have to run linux.


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## TomHsiung (Feb 27, 2018)

Hey, Solaris is hard to use, for non-computer profession. In contrast, Ubuntu is very friendly. Finally, FreeBSD is between Solaris and Ubuntu.

Tom


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## Nicola Mingotti (Feb 27, 2018)

I guess you are wasting a lot of work. Stick to an Operating System and learn it well. 

Your server does not need to run "macOS" because you have "macOS" in your desktop. A desktop OS and a server OS often are optimized to do different things. 

Rule of Thumb. Quick test for a decent server OS: "Does it run out of the box in a GUI?", "Can you run it mainly (or only) in a GUI" ? If the answer is "yes", then you can be 99% sure this will be *bad* server. 

"Easy to use OS" is hardly related to "Realible Server OS". 

Things to consider to select a server OS: documentation, user adoption, price, license, drivers (to do what you intend to), software (to do what you intend to).


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## Cthulhux (Feb 27, 2018)

TomHsiung said:


> Hey, Solaris is hard to use, for non-computer profession.



I disagree. With Solaris having been a decent GUI workstation system before FreeBSD even existed, I don't think that it is much harder to adapt for people who don't know operating systems well.



Nicola Mingotti said:


> Things to consider to select a server OS: documentation, user adoption, price, license, drivers (to do what you intend to), software (to do what you intend to).



"User adaption" is the least important thing for a server operating system as long as it is still maintained.


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## Nicola Mingotti (Feb 27, 2018)

Cthulhux, it is a fundamental point IMO. If there is not a critical mass of users it will become very difficult to find help once you are stuck on some point.

"Users" here means "system managers", since I am referring to server OS(es).

Oh, exception to my rule, of course, If you made a contract of assitance with somebody, you don't care about community, you simply call them whenever you have a problem.


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## priyadarshan (Feb 27, 2018)

sko said:


> If you need more of a general-purpose host, you should go with omniOS (very lightweight base installation, great for server use but can also be set up for desktop use) or OpenIndiana (more biased towards desktop use).



sko Thank you for your comments, informative and inspiring.

I have just installed OpenIndiana on a Lenovo ThinkPad W541, in a few minutes, with not a single glitch. Not even Linux Mint went that smoothly (let's not mention Win 10, which takes several hours to bring up to date). The only driver missing is wireless, otherwise all seems to work. Booting seems a bit faster than FreeBSD 11.1, with Mate desktop.

We run FreebSD on all of our servers, and most of our engineers workstations, but it seems I have a new toy now.

I must say, when I saw the booting line "Loading unix..." it felt wonderful.

The Mate install is really well done, a bit retro perhaps, but better than my own "custom made", for sure.

Thank you again, I think I am going to enjoy playing with it. Best wished to the illumos community for keeping such a great project alive.


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## Deleted member 30996 (Feb 27, 2018)

I wanted to try Solaris a long time ago but it needed 500MB RAM as I recall and the machine I had at the time only had 250MB. I should still have the disk somewhere.

UNIX has an appeal to me and all things considered, now may be the time for me to try OpenIndiana. Though I do hate the name "Hipster".


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## priyadarshan (Feb 27, 2018)

Same here, "hipster" is not the best-sounding of names.
At first impact, after looking around for a few hours, I really like the man pages, some are even better then FreeBSD's, which I thought an impossible achievement.
Also, the feeling at the shell is different, it almost feel like a natural progression, coming from Linux, then FreeBSD, now illumos.
Once pkg update is run, it automatically creates a new booting environment, in case one wish to roll back.

On the con side: ThinkPad w541 audio is not yet active, and when the system tries to beep or play a sound it will kind of freeze Mate. Mouse still move around, but I need to login with other client and reboot. I need to fix that.
If you care for nullfs, it is called lofs in illumos.
I will play around some more when I have time, and perhaps post a brief info here, if allowed. It is definitely a nice cousin to FreeBSD.


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## Cthulhux (Feb 27, 2018)

You don't have to use OpenIndiana - there is always Tribblix (which is really lovely - and installs incredibly fast).


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## Deleted member 30996 (Feb 27, 2018)

I couldn't find the disk I referred to, I had it marked 500MB RAM, but did find my OpenSolaris 2008-05 Live disk.

Edit: With the exception of it not recognizing my FAT formatted USB sticks, and a few other differences like using prstat instead of `top`, I think I can handle this without too much fret.


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## Deleted member 30996 (Feb 28, 2018)

priyadarshan said:


> I must say, when I saw the booting line "Loading unix..." it felt wonderful.



Yes it does.

After looking over my OpenSolaris disk I installed OpenIndiana on my least favorite FreeBSD box. It looks exactly the same and even more familiar. `top` works, `pkg update --accept` updated 1001 packages in about 20 minutes and went through its own process of preparing to do so that was interesting.

It has some quirks. My root password had already expired when I used `su` and had to make a new one. You can run pf on Solaris and right now I'm trying to figure out how to do it on OpenIndiana. 

It's different and will no doubt take some work, but I figured out FreeBSD and OpenBSD and will figure this out, too.


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## sko (Feb 28, 2018)

Trihexagonal said:


> My root password had already expired when I used  su and had to make a new one.



Usually you want to leave the root account disabled. Solaris/Illumos has role based access control, so you can delegate very fine grained authorizations or use pre-defined profiles such as e.g. "database admin" or "primary admin" (=equivalent to the superuser).
Search for RBAC, there is lots of documentation out there.
You might also want to try to get your hand on a copy of the "OpenSolaris Bible" which can usually be found for a few bucks (used). Despite being ~10 years old, the basic concepts and architecture described in the book still apply to current illumos distributions. Especially the chapters on FMD, SMF, Dtrace, Zones and RBAC are highly valuable if you want to get started quickly. Crossbow wasn't a thing when the book was written, but the paper from its introduction at LISA09[1] provides essentially all you need to know of the overall architecture and to get you started. The manpages of the involved tools will fill the voids.

[1] http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/articles/servers-storage-admin/crossbowlisa09-304604.html


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## Deleted member 30996 (Feb 28, 2018)

Thanks, I'll see if I can pick up a copy on ebay. I'll have to research the profile delegation part. I'm used to running as root when I need to Admin something.

I'm getting the hang of it now, I've only used it a few hours. The command syntax is different, but so are some for OpenBSD. The one thing I haven't got yet is how to mount my FAT USB drives so I can pull my files

I went with ipf since it's already installed but the ruleset was empty and it is not turned on by default. There were ruleset examples and I just modified one of them.

SSH and portmap were enabled by default with open ports, which I didn't want. Disabling SSH was easy enough but it's not portmap, sunrpc, or rpcbind, it's `svcadm disable rpc/bind` so the syntax is different. I scanned it from the LAN and everything is kosher with ipfw now.

I do get sound out of my Gateway/Acer clone and have watched a youtube video on Firefox.

Gkrellm is available so I'm happy with that, aside from the pkg repository being quite small.

The rest is very familiar. I just need to use it a while and read the documentation further.

Edit: My Oracle account finally went through, so with laptops to spare I might as well have a Solaris 11.3 box, too.


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## TomHsiung (Feb 28, 2018)

For a commercial server OS, the technology teams would develop that OS and make it nice, macOS is an example. For an open server OS, the more people use it, the better developed it would be. Money drives the development and evaluation of commercial server OS, therefore once the money supply is cut off, it dies. In contrast, open server OS's development and evaluation is not driven by money. Instead it is driven by the interest of computer fans who like to make a difference.


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## _martin (Feb 28, 2018)

Well, solaris is probably not the #1 OS to try at home when setting media center. Though I must say I had my "mediagw" server running solaris 10 and later solaris 11 at home for few years 

It's an OS you need to invest time to learn it. It doesn't help that many solutions to problems are locked under MOS (my oracle support) -- if you're not a paying customer solution is harder to reach. 
In _my opinion (stressing the word my) there's no better OS for setting up storage server.  The whole SCSI framework (STMF) is just .. [FONT=Courier New]\o/[/FONT]. I always say: "yes!, that's how it should be done!"
All around zones, ZFS, SAN, iSCSI .. just perfect. 

Oracle does have solid documentation though. As mentioned, it takes time to dig through it but in my opinion it's worth it. 

But as with PC where P stands for personal, server is there to serve. So it's up to you to choose the best fit there for you.


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## Deleted member 30996 (Mar 1, 2018)

sko said:


> You might also want to try to get your hand on a copy of the "OpenSolaris Bible" which can usually be found for a few bucks (used).



Right time looking, I got a copy for $4.57 total on ebay. The others were going for $35-$76. 

I've got a working desktop out of OpenIndiana and posted a screenshot on my site tonight.

I still haven't got my USB drives to mount though. It's automount, I know where to look and the designation for it, but it says it cannot be mounted no matter what I've tried so far.  This is only the 2nd time I've used ZFS, and with 4GB RAM, so it's still mostly a mystery to me but seems to be doing fine.

Now all I get out of `dmesg` are multiple "Notice" pointing to my Ethernet card flags "not updated?" That was not the case initially, but I have got internet and listened to radio on Rhythmbox.

I have boku HDD for my Thinkpads and will swap one out to work on Solaris later


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## mefizto (Mar 1, 2018)

Greetings all,

interesting discussion.  Just like _martin, I have been running a Solaris based server, (OmniOS), and like he, I have been thrilled with the SCSI framework.

sko, _martin,

since you seem to have quite experience, which of the surviving Solaris based OS would be the one to try for with X11/GUI form the perspective of (hopefully) longer term survivability?

Kindest regards,

M


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## ronaldlees (Mar 1, 2018)

Cthulhux said:


> You don't have to use OpenIndiana - there is always Tribblix (which is really lovely - and installs incredibly fast).



The site for Tribblix says it's the pet project of an astrophysicists or some such thing.  That infers it has some of the kind of stuff he'd likely use preinstalled, so it's probably a pretty full boat GUI setup I'd guess.


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## Cthulhux (Mar 1, 2018)

By default, there is no "full boat GUI setup" (as even _x11_ is optional). You are advised to install "the kitchen sink" though, so you won't have to think about particular packages too much.

I found this installation video to be enlightening:


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## TomHsiung (Mar 1, 2018)

priyadarshan said:


> TomHsiung Let us know how it is going with OpenIndiana. I was always curious about illumos vs *BSD differences.


The software packages for OpenIndina is old (e.g., CUPS service package for network printers), even much older for Solaris. You know, if few people use an open-source OS, their contribution to the development and evaluation of that OS is small. macOS is not so because it's an commercial system, Apple spent money on it and those who developing it get paid. What's interesting is that hackintosh develops and evaluates well, I think the most primary reasons for this is that many people want to use macOS as their OS (indeed, macOS is a very effective and nice system) but don't want to pay the cost of Apple hardwares which are incredibly expensive.

Tom


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## ronaldlees (Mar 1, 2018)

Cthulhux: thanks for the link - Tribblix looks like a very easy setup.  Boot, then do the install with the "kitchen-sink" specified.  Maybe I'll give it a whirl someday when I have the time.


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## Cthulhux (Mar 1, 2018)

TomHsiung said:


> The software packages for OpenIndina is old (e.g., CUPS service package for network printers)



CUPS in illumos's _pkgsrc_ is on version 2.2.6 as of now.



ronaldlees said:


> Maybe I'll give it a whirl someday when I have the time.



Report back!  (Always interesting to read illumos success stories.)


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## sko (Mar 1, 2018)

mefizto said:


> since you seem to have quite experience, which of the surviving Solaris based OS would be the one to try for with X11/GUI form the perspective of (hopefully) longer term survivability?



I'm exclusively using illumos on servers (smartOS in production and omniOS for testing/learning/personal entertainment), so I can't really give any advice on that.

Regarding the survivability I'd say the number of distributions isn't that big and every one fills a specific niche, so there is no competition going on which might break things apart and send single distributions to void in the foreseeable future.
Maybe a key point - at least that's how I perceived it - in the illumos community is, that basically all major developers are former Sun (or Oracle) employees and they seem to keep that mild BDFL-model alive for various parts of the OS. There are only a few (or even just one) specialist for a given topic, mostly the original authors for a given technology, which keep an eye on and overwatch/steer the ongoing development of their "pet".
Also the huge overlap of user/developer groups is unmatched by any other OS - most distributions are backed by (big) companies which build their infrastructure or even their whole business on illumos and "their" distribution of it. So the level of "dog-fooding" in almost all these distributions is exceptional.
With this also comes the high level of paid full-time developers and very high professionalism of the whole community. Where Linux is to a large extent driven by hobbyists and tinkerers, illumos is almost exclusively driven by professionals who use it and depend on it in their jobs.

So to sum it up: I think the handful of distributions that have established during the ~7 years since illumos is a thing are here to stay, especially considering they all serve their own niche.
If I'd have to choose now I'd probably just go with OpenIndiana but have a closer look at XStreamOS beforehand - this is kind of a newcomer and seems to be targeted at professionals/developers as it incorporates all major server technologies (including stuff you won't need on a regular desktop) with a GUI and tools.


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## Deleted member 30996 (Mar 1, 2018)

TomHsiung said:


> The software packages for OpenIndina is old (e.g., CUPS service package for network printers), even much older for Solaris.



When I updated OpenIndiana I got Firefox ESR 52.6.0 and www/firefox-esr is showing 52.6.0_3.1 in ports. x11/mate is in sync on both platforms.

I watched it go through its process of updating 1001 packages, though those are the only ones I've checked to see how current they are.


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## _martin (Mar 1, 2018)

mefizto said:


> since you seem to have quite experience, which of the surviving Solaris based OS would be the one to try for with X11/GUI form the perspective of (hopefully) longer term survivability?



It's been few years since I saw an X server (if I don't count Xming or accidental startup of CDE on one HP-UX server  ). All my servers are servers, so no X at all. I'm using Solaris 11.3 on my personal servers, OpenIndiana in LAB. 

But sko summed it up good.


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## forquare (Mar 2, 2018)

Since I was taught Unix on Solaris, I find it quite a nice system to use. I’ve not got any boxen running it (or derivatives) at the moment, but that’s because I’m loving FreeBSD at the moment. 




TomHsiung said:


> What's interesting is that hackintosh develops and evaluates well, I think the most primary reasons for this is that many people want to use macOS as their OS (indeed, macOS is a very effective and nice system) but don't want to pay the cost of Apple hardwares which are incredibly expensive.



Obligatory “just a note that this goes against the macOS licence since to comply you need to run macOS on Apple hardware.”


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## mefizto (Mar 6, 2018)

Hi sko, _martin,

thank you for the replies.

Kindest regards,

M


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## Deleted member 30996 (Mar 8, 2018)

My OpenSolaris Bible arrived today, the guy who owned it took good care of it. It's very similar to my XML Bible.

My new Thinkpad T400 with Intel Core2 Duo P8600 @ 2.4GHz and Crucial 8GB RAM to max it out came today, too. I'm still waiting on the battery and a 250GB @ 7200RPM WD Scorpio Black HDD to get here but they will shortly. It will be my new Solaris 11.3 box.


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## Datapanic (Mar 8, 2018)

I initially learned unix on xenix, and later BSD 2.something, and Solaris 7 shortly came after.  Solaris was/has always been easy if you have the aptitude to take it on.  Otherwise, do linux...


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## Wamphyre (Mar 8, 2018)

FreeBSD is simply perfect to deploy a streaming service, so, to my knowledge, the best option I tried is FreeBSD


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## priyadarshan (Mar 8, 2018)

Trihexagonal said:


> My OpenSolaris Bible arrived today,



Trihexagonal My copy has slightly grayish paper, and washed out black Section headers which makes it reading it a bit difficult. Is your copy the same?


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## Deleted member 30996 (Mar 8, 2018)

No, priyadarshan, all the pages are white with light gray headers and a darker gray for the Parts section. Copyright 2009.

There is a sticker on the first page inside the cover with the name and address of the person who originally owned it. He must have taken pride in it and took exceptional care of it.

My battery and HDD came today. I have my workspace set up, am getting ready to put it all together now and install Solaris from their .usb boot media.

Edit: It should all go so easily. All my hardware is compatable (RAM works too), "all system resources are healthy", have Internet and already have pf up and running.  Gkrellm and Gimp, too.


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## Deleted member 30996 (Mar 9, 2018)

forquare said:


> Since I was taught Unix on Solaris, I find it quite a nice system to use.



This really is slick and makes my desktops look almost klunky. The package manager reminds me of KDE 3 or something I used in the past and is simple.

It did not, however, let me make a separate user account during the build process. As jitte, I am root and need to enter my root password, which is really no different than FreeBSD when you get down to it. I have yet to read much of the book or about profile delegation of privileges and going by what I already know. pf is working as it should.

I was hoping I could plug my FAT USB drives in, same ones I use all the time, and Oracle automount them, but not even with the menu mount command. More than one way around that till I figure it out. I took me longer than I care to admit to figure out how to mount a USB stick on FreeBSD. 

I've already got a working desktop out of it though and will post a screenshot in a day or two.


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## Deleted member 48958 (Mar 9, 2018)

TomHsiung said:


> Oracle Solaris is Unix but not easy to use


It was its biggest problem!


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## priyadarshan (Mar 9, 2018)

Trihexagonal said:


> I've already got a working desktop out of it though and will post a screenshot in a day or two.



Thank you for the good news, and information related to book.
In case you have issues with sound, you could check a recent thread on oi-discuss mailing list: oi-discuss mailing list


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## Deleted member 30996 (Mar 9, 2018)

priyadarshan said:


> In case you have issues with sound, you could check a recent thread on oi-discuss mailing list: oi-discuss mailing list



priyadarshan, I got sound out -of-the-box on OpenIndiana and Solaris and have listened to internet radio with Rhythmbox on both. I have a Gateway laptop running OpenIndiana and Thinkpad Solaris.

I probably didn't explain myself well when talking about Solaris only letting me create one user. It said something to the effect of choose a name for a user who will have root privileges. I used `su` and Solaris gave me the same message about my root password already expired. That's all I've ever used to become root.


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## priyadarshan (Mar 10, 2018)

As far as I know, OpenIndiana expires root password after the very first use.

Unfortunately, it seems the installer is still strictly bios legacy-mode (ie no UEFI).

I tried to launch the Live DVD, and it forced an HP Z620 worstation, with booting FreeBSD (as UEFI), to Bios-legacy mode, effectively botching the boot disk.

Mind you, I was not installing it. Just the mere running of it changed the boot setup.

Unfortunately, we do not have any non-EUFI machines here, so I will wait to play more with OI when they offer UEFI install.


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## Cthulhux (Mar 10, 2018)

illumos has started to get UEFI support in 2017.


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## priyadarshan (Mar 10, 2018)

Unfortunately not OpenIndiana, yet. See Caution paragraph down below that page.


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## Deleted member 30996 (Mar 10, 2018)

priyadarshan said:


> As far as I know, OpenIndiana expires root password after the very first use.



That's exactly what it did. So now I have a password for my user account and one for my root account, where originally it only let me make the user account password. A strange way to do it IMO but in essence ends up the same as with FreeBSD.

I will say there is a plethora of documentation for Solaris and no shortage of info on the different aspects of using it.


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## priyadarshan (Mar 11, 2018)

Yes, that is one aspect I like about OpenSolaris/illumos, documentation is great. Man pages are a joy to read, to.


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