[OpenIndiana-discuss] [UNSUBSCRIBE]

[Saso Kiselkov]

On 06/06/2013 18:01, Jerry Kemp wrote:
> I think that Garrett and everyone else has done an awesome job with the
> work they have accomplished.  I use OpenIndiana as a desktop everyday,
> and I appreciate the work that all the developers have done!  I wish I
> was a developer and could contribute myself.  I do networking/Cisco and
> Unix/Solaris system administration.
> 
> With that said, the missing Sparc gap is a big one.  For many admin's,
> when they think Solaris (or Solaris based distro), they assume Sparc is
> a give.
> 
> At $WORK, all the servers are RISC based from one vendor or another.  My
> home servers are mostly the same way.  At least the ones I have set up
> in a server capacity.  I have a personal server in a COLO, along with a
> dozen different boxes that I have either been gifted or have purchased
> from eBay or other sources in my home lab.  From multiple V120's to
> T1000 & T2000, and stuff in between.
> 
> On the pre t-series boxes, I have Solaris 11 Express, and I will explore
> Martin's offerings both now and as they mature.  For t-series boxes, I
> have Solaris 10 or Solaris 11 or Martin's offering.
> 
> I know that the Sparc support discussion is a long ongoing discussion
> here.  But as much as I would like to keep from beating that horse,
> Sparc support is, and will continue to be an important one for many
> people.  It is extremely likely that Martin will draw anyone to his
> distro that needs Sparc support, unless there major bugs that made the
> software unstable or something similar.

User enthusiasm is great, but will only keep the SPARC port going so
far. At some point, devs have to step in and starting hacking away on
the code. I have in the past tried to provide a usable dev environment
with networked machines and remote SSH and ALOM access to freely
experiment with kernel builds and ports. But alas, save for one lonely
soul, nobody took the offer up and so I think what plagues the SPARC
port of Illumos isn't so much lack of consumers, but rather, a lack of
providers.

Let's get down to brass tax here: none of the Illumos developers (and
that includes me) particularly care about SPARC, because that platform
has little to no future. Hardware is only available from one or two
vendors at tremendous markup, which means the only ones who are going to
buy it are large enterprise customers who are buying as part of a
solution package, rendering Illumos on SPARC no more than a small-time
hobbyist's project running on phased-out old clunkers.

And let me be very clear here, "Illumos developers" doesn't mean some
small select group of demigods. It means anybody who can use a keyboard
and hack code.

Cheers,
-- 
Saso