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OpenIndiana is a free and open source Unix operating system derived from OpenSolaris and based on illumos.
Curmudgeonly software reviewer Dedoimedo AKA Igor Ljubuncic reports:
Conclusion
I find the test today somewhat sad. Sure, I did accomplish what I needed, but it gave me no joy, and no hope that this operating system can even even remotely compare against any Linux. Even CentOS is lightyears ahead. In the server environment, it may have its uses, but it completely misses the mark on the desktop.
Package management, applications, it all just feels raw, alien, unfriendly. What do you do if there are problems with drivers, or hardware? Where do you find the latest apps, and this isn't just an act of mercy by a volunteer? What about compatibility on actual hardware. The fact I was not willing to commit my test laptop also tells something.
You can master and tame OpenIndiana, to a level. But it is mostly a futile exercise in obstinacy. All of the stuff we've done above are more or less a given in Linux, and have been so since about 2007. It's like driving an old car and trying to match its abilities to new, modern technology. Unless you're into antiques, it's not really worth it.
The worst part, I guess, isn't the specifics. That can be sorted. It's the absolute lack of progress since 2011, in the desktop space. Underneath it may be wonders, but if you cannot use the system, then it's worthless. Lots of the stuff from the previous version have been removed [or] made less accessible, but we get nothing new in return. So it is nerdier and harder than before, and that's a grim sign of a future that has no place on the desktop. This seems to be true with other operating systems in this family, too. Just not worth the effort. Stick with Linux. Grade wise, 4/10.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by turgid on Monday June 19 2017, @06:33PM (3 children)
Quite a few years ago I rescued a pair of Sun Ultra 80s from a skip. They're identical, with four UltraSPARC IIi 450MHz CPUs, 2GB RAM and Creator 3D graphics. They had Solaris 8 on them IIRC, and put a Solaris Nevada (Solaris nv/11) development build on them. The idea was I'd be able to keep my Solaris skills up to date, have a diverse target on which to compile code (64-bit big endian RISC vs 32- bad 64-bit little endian CISC) and I was kind of half thinking about getting involved with one of the efforts to port Slackware to SPARC. Anyway, Oracle decided that SPARC users shouldn't get free/open versions of Solaris to play with and as for doing any porting work, I ran out of time. They still sit gathering dust.
It's really good to have diverse hardware and software platforms on which to compile. It finds many latent bugs in your code. This is worth remembering as the world consolidates around ARM and x86-64. You really should compile on a big endian machine too.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Tuesday June 20 2017, @12:02AM
ARM is dual endian asfaik. So it should be possible to compile the code as big-endian and run on any ARM?
(Score: 1) by Deeo Kain on Tuesday June 20 2017, @12:52PM (1 child)
The last CISC Intel processor was the Pentium-MMX. Starting witn Pentium-Pro https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentium_Pro [wikipedia.org] Intel's CPU have used a RISC core
(Score: 2) by turgid on Tuesday June 20 2017, @01:33PM
Yes, but the ISA visible to the user is CISC with variable length instruction codes and very lax requirements about code and data alignment with respect to word boundaries. RISCs were typically very fussy about these things. The difference in the layouts of the object code and data would often show up bugs in your code.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].