[oi-dev] Fwd: [developer] Please review 4989 - BIS

Thu Jul 24 00:15:07 UTC 2014

Thank you for your opinions.  I didn't think anyone ran configurations like you describe, but now I know someone does. 

My feeling is that your use case is still rather niche at least within this community.  As such I won't tell you what you should or should not do with illumos, but I hope you understand if those of us contributing time and money focus on those things that we feel are the most important or have the greatest traction amongst our user base.   Especially in the core which we perceive to represent our shared values.  We have tried to focus on the things everyone can agree upon there. 

If you want to drive in a different direction you are welcome to do so.  Based on the comments already made it seems like the areas that will most appeal to you are in the distros. Perhaps you're already a contributor there.  If not you should give it a shot. 

I am going to take a pass on refuting the technical arguments that you've made.  There are numerous errors there but I don't think it serves anyone's purpose for us to continue the debate.  

Sent from my iPhone

> On Jul 23, 2014, at 4:25 PM, "Nikola M. via illumos-developer" <developer at lists.illumos.org> wrote:
> 
>> On 07/22/14 08:07 PM, Garrett D'Amore wrote:
>> Running illumos on bare metal makes great sense; as a hypervisor, you want to do that.  But that use case is completely at adds with the idea of running dual boot.
> That two things (VMs and dual boot) are not against each other, and I don't see why say they are mutually exclusive??
> They are not and there are many reasons why would one use dual boot.
> illumos and opensolaris-descendent distros use Boot Environments, (BEs) on top of ZFS, one can choose during boot, and I have not hear anyone bitching about that valuable option, yet less about one more menu item in GRUB, that does not boot system from ZFS dataset, but from other disk/partition...?
> Difference between these two is close to none from user perspective, and I don't understand why you are bitching around about it, anyway.
> 
>> The dual boot use case is/was primarily intended for folks to be able to use have multiple OS' on their hardware, and predates virtualization technology.  These days, dual booting is just plain silly, and I cannot
> Not only you are wrong about what users need, and arguing with yourself actually, but later things that you said explain why people Want to be able to boot more then one OS on same desktop/laptop system.
> 
> Testing how things (and new hardware) are done with hardware to be able to report bugs about it.
> (Who would want USB 3.0 working and any hardware at all working, but those using dual boot?)
> Also one can not expect system to behave same way on bare metal and virtualized and expecting to have same performace from ZFS on disk(s) and zfs in virtualization, that use image file on top of, say, NTFS and are barely stupid to compare.
> Under virtualization, illumos can not run KVM/Virtualbox, beacue it does not have control over CPU and virtualization UNDER illumos is exactly what one would use dual-booted illumos distro to test for..
> .. so tester can upload locally tested VMs with zones up to the server.
> 
> Main problem is that illumos lack Virtualization I/O drivers for KVM, so that locally configured KVM in illlumos with zones, could be easily transferred on the servers in production, where bandwidth is better.
> (Ask Joyent why they do NOT offer illumos inside KVM , but only Linux and windows - because there are no illumos I/O drivers for KVM as a guest)
> 
> That is why people would like to use illumos as Desktop On bare metal locally and
> GDA, you should better think why illumos still does not have decent guest KVM I/O drivers,
> then demonstrating lack of understanding for illumos users?
>>  drivers.  These days I think anyone who dual boots and isn't writing hardware drivers is either doing so as result of an installation decision made years ago -- understandable, or is just insane.)
> I think that any leader of open source project, yet leader of an whole OS kernel development
> could be called insane if he wants to stop people from using OS in a certain way.
> 
> Dual-boot IS a way for New people to use illumos distros and promote platform and you can laugh as much as you want but people Value what they see with their own eyes and thet they can install themselves and run, right away and that includes shrinking partition to fit ZFS on same disk.
> 
> It is understandable that people have one HD in their laptop/desktop, and that they want full speed for their applications of different kind on different OSes and that people want to have Machine in their hands as close as possible to server they would be deploying.
> That are also Solaris roots anyway, to basically have a Server on a desk, so you can manage it locally as the server in production would be managed and then use setting on large server - that is what you said once GDA, anyway. Having Desktop environment on that kind of install is a huge plus and eliminate the need for other machines to control it.
> If Dual boot is poor man's test install, then Desktop is poor man's way to administer it with no need to set up laboratory of machines to try things out.. And as explained, some things simply can not be done inside VM (for started VMs themselves, etc.)
> 
> Why would someone want to keep windows/linux on same machine? Well ask them, maybe because there are some applications needed to be run in full speed with good graphics performance
> Or because they have no leader of a project that bashes Desktop distribution use, whenever he has a chance.
> I left it as a fail safe, to use apps only available there at full speed and to be able to test if new hardware works also with other OS, before reporting if it is working or not under illumos.
> I end up not using windows when I installed Opensolaris/Openindiana but I would never kill it.
> 
>> I have to confess that I use VMware (a commercial v12n product) for my illumos work these days -- in fact right now I have a couple of different OS' running on my laptop at the same time -- MacOS, 2 instances of illumos, an instance of Windows, and an instance of CentOS.  It just wouldn't be practical to do this multi boot.
> This is not the first time you advertize other platforms, non-illumos applications and make laugh of users of illumos in this way. You can use whatever you like in your private life, but don't bash anyone else around to do what you are doing.
> 
> I am sorry, I don't buy Apple hardware for its'sick connection to OSX, I am not recommending VMWare's proprietary vendor lock-in that costs walls of money in production, when I have 3 different and better VM solutions and at the end instances of Windows are great virtualized, that is true. (btw VmWare does NOT work under illumos, so forget it)
> 
> For things like this illumos today IS used as virtualization platform, but mostly to support linux/windows hegemony of software and if one simple grub menu option that can boot not from ZFS dataset, but from separate partition/disk bother you that much, then I am out of options explaining it to you, GDA then problem is not technical in nature.
> GDA, Maybe your problem is from using OSX on Apple hardware that blocks you from effectively using dual-boot and expecting to use single-vendor special apps to be able to dual-boot only certain "approved" systems (yuck!), but that is your problem, not the rest of the world using PCs without Apple logo on them.. :)
> 
> 
> 
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