[OpenIndiana-discuss] I figured this deserved a separate thread

[Daniel Kjar]

I think this is  a very important conversation to have (and that is why 
I have been lurking all day).

To me OI/OS/Solaris's major advantage is the uptime and predictability 
(when I sit down at a sol10 derivative I know what to expect, and you 
can expect me to type 'bash'), and ZFS.  Out of those three I would say 
#1 ZFS, #2 Uptime, #3 predictability.

What is missing?  Packages and updates!!!!  When I suddenly decide to 
try KDE, I want to be able to do it.  When I want to install R and R 
commander or RKward I want to do it.  When I hear about Oracle and want 
to move my MYSQL databases to postgresql I want to just be able to do it 
(well I could do that, but I am really busy at the moment, but then 
there is the CF connection on their end that may not play well with 
postgresql...).

So to be constructive, as soon as I get some time (after Christmas) I 
would like to make sure that R, R commander, and when KDE comes online, 
RKward packages work and are up to date for OI.  That is the least (and 
probably the most) I can do for this great project.  I hope may other 
people do the same for their programs of choice and need.  I think that 
will make OI exactly what everyone wants.   Luckily the real guts of the 
OS already exceed anyone's expectations.  Particularly on 
multi-processor multi-core massive ram boxes.