[OpenIndiana-discuss] Sparc

Sat Sep 6 18:03:58 UTC 2014

Ok, since no one else wants to bite, I guess I will.  

I haven’t spoken with Martin or spent any significant time watching his distro for a while now, so this information may not be entirely up to date; but it’s highly unlikely that things have changed significantly in recent months.

A couple of years ago, Martin quit his job (sort of) and embarked upon making openSXCE.  It was a one-man effort, requiring extreme self-sacrifice.  His announcement of the distro ruffled quite a few feathers in multiple communities, and in the months following he seems to have been shunned and maligned by the Illumos community, the OpenIndiana community (to some extent), and probably a few others.  

Because of that, he shifted openSXCE away from Illumos to a derivative of it (?) called Dillix (sp ?).  I’m not sure how significant that is.  He’s not the only one to have had problems with Illumos.  Look at the website for Schillix, and you’ll see they had problems with Illumos, too.

His May 2014 release was the first for the past year.  I think he initially wanted to release updates monthly, but that has not materialized yet.  (It’s a lot of work.)

I’ve included below his post to this list announcing the distro.  Although the status is not current, it'll give you a lot of insight about openSXCE and where he wants to take it.

He is extremely dedicated to the distro, and the extreme self-sacrifice have at times made him come across as being less than stable; but in my conversations with him privately, he seems like a pretty decent fellow.  

I believe he collaborates with a few people, primarily fellow-Russians, whom he seems to feel more at ease with, but the distro seems to remain primarily his baby at this time.  I’m sure he would welcome more help, and I believe he would like to see the community to grow, and the development of it to grow beyond primarily himself.  He doesn't seem to have a real good grasp about how to make that happen, though.

His living situation has improved this past year, but the last I knew, it was not very good, to say the least, and probably still isn’t what most folks would consider reasonable.  He could use some financial help in a serious way.  Even just a few dollars here and there mean a lot to him.  

The official website is: http://www.opensxce.org

He used to have a mailing list that someone in the Netherlands set up for him, but it had very little traffic, and seems to have disappeared in recent months.

If you’re interested, write him at martin at martux.org  

It appears to be the only open source distro for sparc, and I have not seen anyone else having much interest in it, so if you want an open source distro for sparc, I think that is your only option.  And I’m not sure I should call this an “open source” project, but it is a free one.

I hope this helps.

Peter, heiromonk

Begin forwarded message:

> From: Martin Bochnig <martin at martux.org>
> Subject: [OpenIndiana-discuss] A potential new Illumos reference distro candidate: IA32, AMD64, sun4u, sun4v
> Date: December 17, 2012 at 7:22:04 PM MST
> To: Discussion list for OpenIndiana <openindiana-discuss at openindiana.org>
> Reply-To: Discussion list for OpenIndiana <openindiana-discuss at openindiana.org>
> 
> Dear Illumos and all OpenSolaris comrades
> 
> 
> 
> Sorry that I wasn't online for 2 months.
> I did not break my promise: In fact I did nothing else but working on
> Illumos' new SVR4 based reference distro for IA32, AMD64 and sun4u as
> well as sun4v, with X11, also on _all_ SPARC platforms.
> 
> 
> As it was the goal to create sort of reference distro, the standards
> needed to be kept high.
> For this reason it didn't take 5 weeks, as originally estimated, but 5 months.
> FULLTIME(!), night and day, no holidays  ...
> 
> In fact I forgot to earn money (just had no minute), for this reason I
> lost my apartment.
> I needed to live 6 weeks in my old year 1988 built Mercedes.
> Therefore I could not go online. I have no clue what has happened here
> on our lists.
> So far I only had time to read some of today's messages.
> 
> I would probably never feel ready to release anything, because
> demand_for_perfection bugs me now and then.
> However, this time I did not just create a non-installable crappy
> LiveDVD as in the past with MartUX.
> 
> Instead I ported distro_const and caiman's text-install and
> gui-install to use SVR4 instead of IPS, for convenience the excellent
> OpenCSW's pkgutil was chosen.
> Not just to get it to function "somehow", but to remove all traces of
> that IPS stuff, while keeping the useful things in, but to match them
> as much as possible with pkgutil  ...
> 
> There would have been 2 fundamental approaches: Easy and tougher.
> The first would be to take all IPS manifests and convert them
> semi-automated to SVR4 prototype/pkginfo/depend files.
> And simply to keep all the new pkg sets and pkg names and dependencies
> just intact.
> This would certainly be nice and interesting. Maybe someone want's to
> do that, too  :)
> However, this would break dependency resolution backwards
> compatibility to all legacy SVR4 packages in existance.
> 
> For this reason, I neglected it.
> 
> The second one was, to reverse-engineer everything back to the old times.
> And that's what I did.
> 
> Not just for Illumos/OSnet, but for ___all___ consolidations.
> Not just to get old pkgdefs to build without failiure (where they are
> available), but also to re-assign more than 15 thousand (!) unassigned
> files to new pkgdefs (this number for Illumos ON alone!!!)
> Also it was necessary to take older G11N checkouts (just as one
> example), because we need the good old /usr/openwin
> internationalization stuff as well, for OpenXsun.
> 
> OpenXsun's port itself took another 3 weeks.
> And also the Illumos kernel needed to
> It is an endless endless endless list.
> And basicly one never gets 100% finished (depending on how high your
> standards of perfection are).
> However, originally I promised to come back to you on October 18th.
> Today is December 18th. Probablybout time to make a short pre-announcement.
> 
> 
> Current Status:
> 
> 0.) Illumos/Nevada built for x86 and SPARC: YES, Fully packaged: YES
> 
> 1.) Caiman Sliminstall: distro_const: (always Python based) ported to
> SVR4 OpenCSW pkgutil: for x86 and SPARC: YES, Fully packaged into
> SVR4: YES
>                                   text-install (Python version):
>       ported to SVR4 OpenCSW pkgutil: for x86 and SPARC: YES, Fully
> packaged into SVR4: YES
>                                   gui-install  (C version)
>          ported to SVR4 OpenCSW pkgutil: for x86 and SPARC: YES,
> Fully packaged into SVR4: YES
>                                  (the rest of Caiman under way, but
> stopped due to the other major TODO's)
> 
> 2.) X11-NV (Xorg): built for x86 and SPARC: YES,  Fully packaged into SVR4: YES
> 
> 3.) openXsun: ported to SPARC-Illumos: YES, Fully packaged into SVR4: YES
> 
> 4.) oi-build/illumos-build/sfw: built for x86 and SPARC: YES, Fully
> packaged into SVR4: YES
> 
> 5.) g11n including SUNWxsun-keytables for SPARC, plus messages and
> inputmethod: built for x86 and SPARC: YES, Fully packaged into SVR4:
> YES
> 
> 5.) JDS: 80% built for SPARC, 95% built for x86, 100% fully packaged
> into SVR4: YES
> 
> 6.) Hacked pkgutil to finally support SUNW core packages (that are
> split into different architecture versions, yet all have the samae
> package names in their pkginfo files (without their arch specific
> suffix!): YES.
> As a result, the patched version of pkgutil can be used to install the
> entire new OS, yet still supports installing OpenCSW and Blastwave
> packages, if you just add a mirror line! You can tweak the order of
> preference at which, by simply changing (or commenting in/out) mirror
> lines.
> Plus: The mirror can also be a simple locally available filesystem
> directory. No httpd needs to be running, and it doesn't matter on what
> fs type these directories reside.
> 
> As time pressure forces me to release something, although I'm not
> entirely ready (still missing dependencies, that I still installed
> from the old Solaris DVD for internal testing (but which aren'r
> re-distributable).
> 
> I can create a few dirty fake packages to work around this problem for now.
> Because I don't really want to use pkgutil's --nodeps option. And to
> exclude specific packages doesn't work right now.
> Need to look, why.
> 
> As said, the last few inches still need to be completed.
> But I do understand that you want to see some proof to play with.
> The text_install iso's do get released on holy eve, December 24th.
> As does the complete openXsun port src.
> All the other sources will get 100% released, too. But there is still
> a ton of temporary intermediate files in them.
> And I so far never cared about adding me or the new project's name to
> the CDDL headers (e.g. as Nexenta uses to do). Need to aks a few folks
> about that.
> All that needs to get polished, and it will.
> 
> 
> Project name: You will enjoy it :)
> It is not intended to be "my" distro.
> It is neither MartUX, nor and other personified variant.
> But as I cannot register the new domain without credit card (with some
> minimal balance ...), I'm not sure if the name should be spoken out
> already.
> 
> OURdistro!!!!! That is the vision.
> In 6 days you can test the first installable text-install iso's for
> SPARC and x86.
> The gui-install version that boots into JDS follows a few days later.
> As do the sources (except for openXsun, which you get on the first
> day, December 24th)
> 
> Our distro, our project, our way of life  :)
> 
> 
> CREDITS: I thank my family and my wife, mother, grandmother for all
> the unbelievable support and financial help and understanding.
> Thanks go also to Al Hopper, who always helped me, did all the hosting
> work and donated 200$ in 2009.
> Thanks also to Volker Brandt, who borrowed me 200EUR 2 months ago
> (Volker: You will get them back, somehow, promised ...)
> Also to Brian Gupta, who donated 3000$ in 2008 and rescued my life.
> Also to Ken Mays, who created the nice Wiki page for us, and helped
> forwarding a V490 cpu board to me, from overseas.
> 
> kind regards, and till December 24th!
> 
> 
> 
> 
> %martin bochnig
>  http://wiki.openindiana.org/oi/MartUX_OpenIndiana+oi_151a+SPARC+LiveDVD
>    http://www.youtube.com/user/MartUXopensolaris
>      http://www.facebook.com/pages/MartUX_SPARC-OpenIndiana/357912020962940
>        https://twitter.com/MartinBochnig
> 
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