[oi-dev] Resignation as OI Lead

[garrett.damore at dey-sys.com]

On Aug 30, 2012, at 5:25 PM, Jim Klimov <jimklimov at cos.ru> wrote:

> 2012-08-31 3:53, garrett.damore at dey-sys.com wrote:
>> In the modern era of virtualization, why wouldn't you do this with a hypervisor?  I run illumos on my mac -- in a vm.  (You can even do this for free with VirtualBox, although in my experience VMware offers a better experience.  VB may have fixed the pathological problem that made me steer clear of it in the past -- I haven't looked into it recently.)
> 

So, my quick response to all the thoughts below:

* Yes, it may be possible to build a solution that works.
* It will almost certainly be inferior to other solutions.
* It will take a *lot* of effort to keep it working and relevant on current hardware.

So then, I have just a single question:  What is the compelling reason for doing all this effort?  Why not just load up Ubuntu on your desktop (or buy a Mac, or even run *cough* Windows) and run illumos bits in a VM?

Even the "eat your own dog food" argument is kind of thin, since I contend that typical workstation usage is very different from the "real world" usage of illumos in data centers.  Frankly a better "eat your own dog food" case would be to use illumos for your home NAS appliance or mail gateway or something like that. ;-)

(To be clear: I'm not advocating against illumos -- I'm advocating that anyone who's going to invest the huge effort it takes to maintain a distro should have a really compelling reason for undertaking that work.  So far nobody has presented such a story for the desktop case for illumos -- at least not that I've heard.  I don't think there is any doubt that there are ample such cases for illumos in the datacenter, though.)

As you've presented it, aspirations of mediocrity (your "base" developer workstation) are entirely uninteresting to me.  (The good news is, my opinion really doesn't matter all that much -- I wasn't investing effort here anyway. :-)

	- Garrett
> 
> Well, thinking of a developer workstation, with multiple VMs for testing
> and developing stuff, a hypervisor based on illumos was what I'd have
> in mind first-hand: with ZFS cloning/snapshotting and rollbacking of
> VMs it allows for quite "cheap" experiments in terms of disk space,
> etc., while keeping even a single-spindle laptop's data safer with ZFS.
> 
> I am not sure about KVM, but with Virtualbox's desktop integration one
> might make his individual virtual windows from guest OSes seem like
> they are apps of the host. Presumably, that (or lx-branded zones) can
> take care of Skype while we're busy eating our dogfood ;)
> 
> Being not a voracious graphics user with intricate appetites, I'd not
> bother much about how nice this illumos-based OS's desktop looks or
> how last-version its firefox is. If it can draw some windows quickly,
> that's good enough. A full-blown graphical OS with a primary focus of
> being a lap/desktop?.. Well, that's what I'm trying since yesterday.
> 
> OOB HW support is kinda lacking, and that may be a problem on both
> server and desktop markets for illumos in general :(
> 
> //Jim
>