Why BSD/OS is the best candidate for being the only tested legally open UNIX. reddit / BSD ---------------------------------------------------------------------- rhabarba · 2018-11-29 15:51 > Obviously, to free UNIX, System V and its entire family of descendants would also need to be open sourced. The article ignores illumos. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- MrTar · 2018-11-29 17:41 Who hasn't ---------------------------------------------------------------------- tidux · 2018-11-29 20:36 Honestly the combination of Docker and ZFS-grade storage on Linux made Illumos a bit of a joke a few years back, and now [Amazon's new tiny VMM for KVM](https://firecracker-microvm.github.io/) is even doing the whole VM/container hybrid thing better than SmartOS did. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- aspiringgreybeard · 2018-11-29 22:11 Your ZFS on Linux experience must have been much better than mine. I'm running FreeBSD these days for several reasons, but one of them is because I got tired of dealing with instability of ZFS on Linux (and BTRFS, while we're talking filesystems and volume managers in one-- maybe that's what you meant by ZFS-grade). Jails on ZFS have been everything I wanted LXC on ZFS to be and (knocks on wood) I haven't had any significant issues to date. Granted, I took the risk of being an early adopter and quality has improved over the last few years- but things are a long way from parity IMO. Ubuntu making ZFS a default filesystem caused me to pause and reflect for a moment, but there's just too much that makes sense in FreeBSD for me to consider going back. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- illumosguy · 2018-11-30 00:11 But what about the fact SmartOS runs Docker just as well (at native performance and with the degree of isolation provided by LX Zones) through [Triton DataCenter](https://github.com/joyent/triton/blob/master/README.md)? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- illumosguy · 2018-11-30 00:15 And [XNU](https://github.com/opensource- apple/xnu/blob/master/README.md) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- rhabarba · 2018-11-30 00:18 Isn't that (mostly) just a kernel? And doesn't the "NU" part mean that it is **not** UNIX? ;-) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- illumosguy · 2018-11-30 00:37 > Isn't that (mostly) just a kernel? Yes, it is, but Darwin userland largely consists of *BSD software (FreeBSD's first of all, including its PF firewall version)+ launchd, notifyd, asld, libdispatch, openssl, objc4, swift, clang, cups, heimdal, gcc, gmake, bash, gawk, ncurses, autofs...and either way, it's all opensource (have sla look at discontinued [NeXTBSD project](https://github.com/NextBSD/NextBSD?files=1)); Apple used to commit fully featured Darwin ISOs along with sources until few years ago, they are the base for the [PureDarwin](http://www.puredarwin.org) project ---------------------------------------------------------------------- illumosguy · 2018-11-30 00:48 >And doesn't the "NU" part mean that it is not UNIX? ;-) I don't know of any official source confirming this, but I know: https://www.opengroup.org/openbrand/register/brand3648.htm That said, [True64 Unix](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tru64_UNIX) , always regarded as rightful Unix by everybody, had the exact same hybrid design: OSF/1 Mach version + 4.4BSD POSIX API. DragonflyBSD uses a hybrid kernel too, and is not regarded as less 'BSD' for this ---------------------------------------------------------------------- craftkiller · 2018-11-30 00:55 I don't! Illumos rocks ---------------------------------------------------------------------- rhabarba · 2018-11-30 00:56 Hmm, that was not the point. PureDarwin, for example, uses a mixed BSD and GNU userland with the XNU kernel and - while it might be *licensed* to be "a Unix" - is arguably not a *traditional* Unix. Of course, this might be picky from my side, but Inspur K/UX, a Linux distribution, is a *certified Unix* as well, and I still wouldn't recommend to call it a "legally open UNIX" to avoid further confusion. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- illumosguy · 2018-11-30 01:19 I see your point, but again, OSF/1 and True64 shouldn't be called Unix either then, but just Unix-like. AIX is also pretty divergent from its SVR2 root. And if we want to be picky BSD, even as perfectly equivalent clone, is a UNIX rewrite already, which practically relegates IRIX, Ultrix, SunOS 1-4, and all commercial and free BSDs to be Unix-like to. So what is Unix? Historical AT&T Unix and analogues (XENIX), or also its direct descendants (Solaris, AIX, HP-UX, UnixWare, SCO OpenServer); are SVR4 and SIII/Unix-v8 derivatives equally UNIX? And what are QNX, VxWorks, Linux and Minix? I mean, we have a standard...macOS complies to it, BSDs are very close to do the same, Illumos probably does already, while most Linux distributions but 2 proprietary ones still do not completely, and Plan9 derivatives, as well as FreeRTOS, do not at all, in spite of their Unixish ancestry. If we decide to ignore the standard, we have to cope with the question: Looking at code lineage, where does something stop being 'genetically' Unix? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- rhabarba · 2018-11-30 01:43 We have *multiple* standards, including varying versions of the Single Unix Specification. I would draw the line somewhere *above* Linux and Minix because they really have a very different perception of "being UNIX-like" than Solaris and even (to some extent) "the free BSDs" do. Illumos, as mentioned before, is currently "the only tested legally open UNIX" in existence, at least if we're talking about the *legal* heritage of AT&T ("Bell") Unices, making whatever directly was derived from it "the UNIX" despite of Solaris's BSD roots. In fact, BSD, having started as some kind of a "Unix distro", had undoubtedly been "a UNIX" for most of its early history before AT&T got mad about their royalties. Plan 9 is probably a good example of what Unix should have become, finally getting rid of emulating 70s terminal hardware. I wish the Linux community would have been brave enough to cut this rope early enough as well, but now it's too late. In fact, however, Plan 9 was still more "Unix-like" than Linux is, assuming that you accept the 9th and 10th edition as valid Unices. In discussions like this, to come back to the topic :-), I usually just stick to the code heritage. If it was directly derived from UNIX, it is "a (traditional) Unix". If it was not, it is "UNIX-like". That kicks the 386BSD line and everything that came after Net/1 off the branch, admittedly, but that even fits the fact that the OpenBSD team says OpenBSD was "UNIX-like", not actually "a Unix". Excuse my free mixture of "UNIX" and "Unix" though. I just got lost somewhere in between. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- rhabarba · 2018-11-30 01:48 Ah, sad to see the loss of NeXTBSD now. It would have been interesting to use, I guess. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- illumosguy · 2018-11-30 02:08 Nice write-up, I share your view, upvoted. By the way, while SunOS 1 to 4 is 2BSD -based, starting with SunOS 5, aka [Solaris 2, it is a SVR4 derivative](https://www.krsaborio.net/bsd/research/1991/0904.htm) (I've always thought lawsuit had something to do with this) You can tell it's SysV and not BSD by giving a quick look at base commands, which lack BSD extensions, the lack of hier() and the different filesystem hierarchy, the init, etc... ---------------------------------------------------------------------- illumosguy · 2018-11-30 02:09 To tell the truth I felt the same when I saw it abandoned ---------------------------------------------------------------------- rhabarba · 2018-11-30 02:18 I was late to the game anyway. I started seriously looking into Solaris in 2017. Late to the game, as always. ;-) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- illumosguy · 2018-11-30 02:38 I started more or less 10 years ago (Solaris 10, OpenSolaris, OpenSXCE, OpenIndiana)(it's never too late!), while have been into *BSD for a longer time in my early years (NeXTSTEP, IRIX, NetBSD in this oder and then the others); BSDs are all great, but Illumos is nonetheless, actually, it's my preference. I'm of the opinion Solaris 8 to 10 were the best and most advanced server/workstation OSs for their respective time. Also, Sol10 had the best desktop ever made (JDS). I was sad to see Illumos migrating from SunStudio to GCC; also the adoption of Grub made me switch from OI to XStreamOS, as it kept (and still keeps) Sun bootloader. Well, at least, now they switched to FreeBSD bootloader. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- tidux · 2018-11-30 02:49 See previous point about Firecracker. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- illumosguy · 2018-11-30 03:00 Yes, yet you spoke about past, whereas Docker landed on SmartOS quite early, and it's been used widely. Honestly, judging by the number of Triton appliances, I'd never dare state that 'the combination of Docker and ZFS-grade storage on Linux made Illumos a bit of a joke a few years back', even if SmartOS not mainstream and by orders of magnitude less widely adopted than Linux (hint: it never really competed with Linux, Sun's bad management had driven Solaris to lose market around 2005 already). Regarding Firecracker, it's just yet another alternative, IMHO it has nothing to do with SmartOS popularity, and won't affect it negatively, likely projects will rather cooperate with one another. In fact, how is Firecracker practically more convenient than SmartOS? Is therev any reason to always prefer Firecracker starting from today? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- euphraties247 · 2018-11-30 15:48 don't be too sad, I've been able to build Darwin 0.3 for x86 and get it to boot up Rhapsody DR2 and run a chroot'd NeXTSTEP....