[OpenIndiana-discuss] "OpenIndiana lead Alasdair Lumsden resigns"

[Gary Gendel]

On 9/2/12 7:23 AM, Dave Koelmeyer wrote:
> On 2/09/12 02:48 AM, Bob Friesenhahn wrote:
>> On Sat, 1 Sep 2012, Robin Axelsson wrote:
>>>
>>> I'm fully aware of the power of the command line and it is the 
>>> command line that really makes me like Unix based OSes (including 
>>> Linux). But making OI look well-polished with a fancy and easy to 
>>> administer web-admin GUI that would encourage the average-Joe to use 
>>> it as a home-NAS / virtual server is not a bad thing. That way OI 
>>> would reach a higher penetration with a larger user-base and most 
>>> importantly; it will get _free advertising_. To some extent the old 
>>> adage "A good product markets itself" has some truth in it. But it 
>>> must not only be good, it has to /look/ good so that even a less 
>>> versed person will understand how good it is.
>>
>> Focusing on issues like this would be putting the cart before the 
>> horse.  It is more important to be able to easily build everything 
>> and incorporate updates than to have a fancy configuration GUI. OI 
>> popularity should come second to correct functionality and having an 
>> organization (of volunteers and corporate entities) to sustain it. If 
>> OI is worthy, popularity will follow, even if only from people who 
>> already preferred Solaris.
>
> +1. Precisely.
>
I totally agree.  However, I selfishly want an X-windows server and 
window manager on my server.  I personally would prefer a simple window 
manager over a the heavyweight Gnome/KDE camps but there are reasons to 
go with these.

I develop GUI based applications and have just about one of every 
Linux/Unix/Mac/Windows OS and version running to do build and test 
sitting in the home office on the opposite coast.  Our clients still 
have a large investment with Solaris 9/10 so it is important that this 
builds and runs on a Solaris variant.  Some of the apps can launch 
external programs, so it determines whether it should use gnome-open, 
etc. to choose the appropriate application.

I telecommute, so when I make code changes I like to first build and 
test it on a cross section of platforms locally so I don't ship it out 
to the build farm broken and make everyone unhappy.

I run router/firewall/file-share/backup/web/imap,web,smtp mail services 
on an old V20z.  I have over 10 TB of mirrored zfs storage on which 
stores mail for each user  With all of this, I seldomly tax it's 
resources.  I do, however use this to build and test to make sure that 
it properly compiles and runs my applications.  This has saved me 
countless of re-spins do to compiler or library issues. Without 
X-windows and some WM, I would no longer be able to use this machine 
that way and would have to take the hit for breaking Solaris builds.

I recently picked up an Enterprise 450 when I heard of the OI Sparc 
efforts.  However, it came with the internal NIC and the DVD drive 
broken.  It also has that funky PXE graphics card.  I got around the NIC 
by putting a fiberchannel card in and a SX to TX converter, and picked 
up a replacement DVD drive.  I was hoping to not only use it for 
testing, but to use it to help the SPARC OI efforts but it still 
requires X-windows and WM to be useful for me.

I can't believe that I'm the only one that uses OI to do GUI product 
development.

Gary