[oi-dev] OI project reboot required

[Nikola M.]

On 05/10/13 02:19 AM, Garrett D'Amore wrote:
> more constructive than whinging about it will be to find ways to either a) make a commercially viable case for it so people can get paid to work on it, or b) lead a volunteer effort to make this work.
I think that without Desktop that is running on the server, I can not
sell Illumos based distribution as a server product. That is because
small companies and offices expect to have GUI working, so they can log
in and possible do something with the machine.  I suppose that machine
without GUI would look to them as a "blackbox" if there is just command
line.
There is no desktop per se and server as a product per se. It is the
server distribution that has desktop environment and programs for
convenience. If I am selling it, I am selling a server. And having
Desktop environments on server is nice. Not having desktop environment
on server in 2013 is NOT NICE.

I want to be able to run both legacy apps and have compatibility with
Solaris 10 in it's zone and that's about compatibility. Apps made for
Opensolaris also mostly got integrated in OI.
I want innovation in Illumos and to have separated issues of updating
desktop and GUI parts and applications  from the core OS. Having Desktop
environment that aether is started or not, does not stop innovation in
Illumos from happening and be used in practice.

If Solaris 10 (and 11) is a server operating system (GUI does not hurt
server use),
then Illumos distribution could not be hurt to have GUI available and
not to be stuck in CLI.
To me it is strange, why some people that do not care about having at
least some desktop on top of Illumos,
continuously talking about it?
New people coming to the platform FIRST discover "how much cool" GUI is
and they dig deeper IF you lure them, to at least try using it for some
time. And if they got right info they can get on the ship as users, bug
reporters and then contributors.

I came from Linux, I were a fanboy. I found better technology, I
migrated. On Linux I had everything I actually need, BUT the sense of
sanity that Solaris/Illumos have with integrated technologies in one place.

Since I too think that putting on server anything BUT Illumos-based
distribution , is having not much sense,
I want to have server distro on my *laptop* I can use, develop solution
and then apply it on remote server.

I do not want to use Windows/OSX, VMWare, Microsoft Office etc. (nor
have money to throw on Apple etc)
I want to be able to have things I use independent from hostile
proprietary vendors.
Illumos devs could use Openindiana for their development environment
and run KVM instead of VMWare. And for running Virtualbox I also need
Openindiana.

One thing many people do not realize is that because of advanced Illumos
technologies, Illumos-based distributions have a potential to be
super-desktops in some future. Maybe that IS insane, but
I tend to see the future where I use GUI to manage servers and do things
I can not do with CLI-only.
If Fedora would ditch desktop upon install, and Ubuntu started releasing
only server edition without Desktop environment, what would be left of
them selling to customers? (Even if server do not run Desktop)
What would you show to them on the presentation? Black screen of 1985?

I always planned to eventually sell Illumos distro as a server, but I
want a customer to SEE it and say:
"OK, NICE, whatever". And not: "Oh, no.., whatever".
And that is how money could flow. If I have something to contribute back
, but without GUI, I don't think it can sell.
Anyway, I expect Illumos itself in the OI to include KVM and ZFS disk
bandwidth usage scheduling.
And for GUI- those wanting GUI should care about that. Including me.