[OpenIndiana-discuss] So is Solaris officially supported till 2034?

[Nikola M]

On 09/ 4/17 08:18 PM, Apostolos Syropoulos wrote:
> My question was very simple and I got a simple answer. Now, Illumos is 
> not Solaris.
> It is a Solaris clone.

It is other way around if you ask me.
Opensolaris gave birth to illumos, from the same exact source code as 
Solaris Express and then S11 did that exactly the same, adding more code 
to same starting point (Opensolaris snv_134 onward).

So one is not the clone of another, but they are 'brothers by the mother 
line' if you want :P

All this I write not only for you and me, but for a wider auditorium 
looking for the clues or searching the web, just for the record :)

> Personally, I prefer Illumos over Solaris but they are not the same
> thing.  That Solaris is supported until 2034 does not mean that it 
> will be able to run
> on hardware that will be available then.

I would expect exactly that, to be able to run it on compatible but 
newer hardware, and at least on Oracle hardware,
but yes, you are right - over time new hardware requires new support, 
drivers etc.

There helps the thing, that same (even binary) drivers work for decades 
because Solaris driver model was established long time ago and doesn't 
need to change much. Even today most of drivers are shared between 
illumos and Oracle Solaris.
One taking some SPARC machine (like T5220) from 2006/7 and trying to run 
latest proprietary Solaris 11 would find that it is still supported and 
works just fine.
But yes, being 'supported' and 'working just fine' and 'working' are not 
same things.

For example on illumos, my old Dell D620 C2Duo laptop (T5600) seems to 
have problems with processes being using too much cpu time, starting 
somewhere between January and end of March (still running OI December 
BE, that is the last 'working just fine'). And my wireless card is 
'working' but I need to put "ath "03:08.0"
ath "pci168c,2055" in /etc/driver_aliases to have ath driver pick it up. 
(AR5007G 802.11bg)