[OpenIndiana-discuss] Merging OI + OmniOS? (And OpenZFS vs ZFS)

[Kalle Anka]

A question. I am sure this has been discussed before, but maybe it is time to update the discussion? :)
As I have understood it, OmniOS is a robust server OS with no good desktop environment. It is possible to install X11, though:https://geekblood.wordpress.com/2017/10/26/installing-x11-and-a-desktop-environment-on-omnios/
Would it be possible to merge OI and OmniOS? Say, try to transform OI into a desktop environment ontop OmniOS? Both OSes share lot of common ground, so technically it would not be impossible to for instance port MATE to OmniOS? 
OpenSolarish is a bit fragmented as of now. There are several developers working on their own stuff, with different IPS repos, etc. If we could unite some of the work, OpenSolarish would benefit as a whole. 
OmniOS would get new developers, a good desktop environment, and also lot of users coming from OI. 
OI would benefit from all the work the OmniOS developers are doing in getting a stable and robust server OS, so it would free up OI developers to more quickly advance desktop environment. Lot of synergy effects and win-win. OmniOS does the server backend, and OI do the desktop frontend. This lessens the burden for the developers. The more developers, the better.
The situation is similar to two competing camps developing ReactOS - the open sourced WindowsXP clone. Why not unite the two teams instead? It would be much less work for the OI developers if we could build on the excellent work from OmniOS team, and vice versa. Remember, we all love OpenSolarish and it would be better to have one single strong distro, than several competing distros. FreeBSD has only one distro and that is better than the Linux fragmentation mess today. There are only so many OpenSolarish developers, and our community would benefit from one single strong distro.
Or, have I missed something? Like, for instance, do the illumos community also suffer from "Not Invented Here" syndrome like some other OSes? The only truly innovative OS is Solaris, and lets keep it that way by consolidating and uniting our teams so we can make faster progress? I am interested in trying to help the community too. Because Solaris is the best OS! :)


BTW. Earlier I reported that OpenZFS renders ZFS disks unusable: If you import a zpool v28 and ZFS v5, into Linux using OpenZFS, then Solaris 11.3 cannot import the zpool again. Someone suggested that Linux OpenZFS renames the disks as "/dev/sda" instead of "/dev/c0t0d0" in the zpool. So this problem could maybe be fixed by importing and exporting the zpool by a illumos distro which would automatically rename the "/dev/sda" entries to "/dev/c0t0d0" back which means Solaris v11.3 could import the zpool. I have not tested this yet, but it sounds plausible?