[oi-dev] OI project reboot required

[Garrett D'Amore]

Don't misunderstand me.  I want to eliminate 32 bit kernels and delivery of certain 32 bit versions of system utilities. This should in no way affect any 3rd party apps.  We need to keep the 32 bit app runtime for the foreseeable future. 

Sent from my iPhone

On May 12, 2013, at 12:51 PM, "Nikola M." <minikola at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 05/12/13 07:10 PM, Garrett D'Amore wrote:
>> On May 12, 2013, at 9:02 AM, Jim Klimov <jimklimov at cos.ru> wrote:
>> 
>>> 
>>> I believe, 32-bit should be retained. While it is of little utility
>>> for ZFS and other huge-RAM jobs, it may be required for some netbooks,
>>> older hardware repurposed for tests and SOHO servers, as well as for
>>> resource-constrained testing VMs. So I'd vouch for this fork/patch
>>> approach if this upstream is still followed.
>> We've been doing this for years now.  I'm now starting to think -- 3 years later on -- that this argument feels specious today.  Who runs illumos on a netbook?  I did, once.  Not any more.  (And modern netbooks have 64 bit support!)
>> 
>> Older hardware must be *really* old.  Over 5 years.  For servers, probably over 10 years.  I've thrown away my Pentiums and Pentium IIs.  I suppose there could be some Pentium IIIs and IVs out there, or AMD Athlons (pre-Athlon64), but they'd all be really really slow by today's standards.  Do people run illumos on such kit?  I'm highly doubtful, unless that kit is around just to answer the question of whether 32-bit kernels still work. :-)
> Maybe it's called backward compatibility. I think Firefox and
> Thunderbird are 32-bit. Isn't the Multiarch what defined Solaris, like
> always? I don't want we should loose Solris10 zone if someone needs that
> in some moments untill some moment in the future. (There are still
> people not migrated from S10)
> 
> There is still many older computers that could be useful with Illumos
> distro.
> Some Oracle decisions are a bit also insane, like removing support for
> Floppy disk (why removing when not already used much) and support for
> Smart card identification for a Workstation/server.
> 
> Openindiana, Illumos have also an advantage of supporting older
> hardware, that Oracle removed support for.
> We should not forget that market of people using Just FINE servers that
> large corporations throw out but could be used for years.
> Removing support for still widest-supported architecture on the planet
> could be a bit short-sighted in our current market position (not
> counting those high-end cloud Illumos consumers, but ordinary people).
> If there is some netbook that needs to be used, or older but fine
> notebook as a control console, Illumos distro could work on it for
> years, since one of the `advantages` of slow development moving of
> Illumos could be lower need of changing hardware over years. Or bigger
> stability and backward compatibility.
> 
> Of course, nothing is set in the stone, it will be how developers want.
> If 32-bit needs to be moved to separate place or cut of from newest
> advanced be it. But not if it is not necessary.
> 
> GDA: Will there ever be "Release" or "Version" of Illumos? Unlike
> current rolling-releases?
> Will Illumos ABI,API remain stable, like on Solaris?
> 
> 
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