[OpenIndiana-discuss] What belongs in a general purpose O/S?

[Peter Tribble]

On Wed, Aug 20, 2025 at 8:22 AM Carl Brewer via openindiana-discuss <
openindiana-discuss at openindiana.org> wrote:

>
> What actually belongs in an operating system?
>

First of all, there's a distinction between an operating system (here,
illumos) and
a distribution built upon it (here, OpenIndiana).

But a slightly different way of phrasing the question would be: what would
a user
of this system wish to do, and how do we enable that?


> I see, or at least I think I see, a lot of effort on various platforms,
> to maintain applications (gimp? really? bundled?!), and when humans are
> scarce, is this at the expense of device drivers, installation systems
> and so on?
>

If OpenIndiana had no applications, what would people use it for? On popular
consumer OSes (Windows...) it seems that downloading random binary
installers
from anywhere on the web is seen as a viable mechanism to get software into
the hands of end users, and while it works it generates a separate set of
problems.

In the case of gimp, how else is a user expected to get it other than the
distribution
vendor acting as an intermediary?


> For a little while, I recall one of the *BSD ports systems being used on
> some versions of SunOS 5.10+ (correct me if I'm wrong), which seemed a
> good pathway to take, but now we seem to have this weird IPS thingo and
> all the barriers to entry that it introduces.  Every damn UNIX/clone
> system has its own awful system for ports/packages/dependency mess
> making and they *all* suck.
>
> Anyway, enough preamble ...
>
> An O/S (general purpose), must include :
>
> Compiler(s) and standard libraries for the common languages (C/C++ etc,
> whatever GCC calls itself these days) so you can compile the system on
> itself.
> Scripting languages (sh, perl, python)
> shells (sh, csh, tsch, bash etc)
> A set of robust device drivers that 'just work' (this is 2025, you
> shouldn't need to go futzing around to find the right driver for your
> video card, it should *just work*)
> A sane, sensible, simple install setup that works on modern hardware
> without hacks. This, these days, means all the various BIOS stuff on PC
> hardware shouldn't need weirdness to work.
> Backup solution (borg? tar, zfs send etc)
> A bombproof filesystem that supports auto up and downsizing etc (ZFS is
> pretty close to perfect) and is cross-platform (hrm, it sorta is, but
> then there's ZFS features, and they're not standard anymore, it *might*
> work ... )
> Some sort of sensible firewall and tripwire'ish solution.   Something
> that makes FTP (ha!) "just work" etc.
> System performance monitoring (top, ntop, nagios plugins,  the standards
> that we all use)
>
> I don't think there'd be too much dissent wrt that list. Where it gets
> interesting is what then gets bundled in, and how?
>
> Should, for example, apache be bundled in? With the maintenance issues
> that this brings with it? Should VLC? Should Firefox or some other
> browser?  If it's a desktop system, you'd want FF and Thunderbird or
> similar, some reasonable version of TWM (golly, I am old!) but for a
> server?  I don't know where you draw the lines, but it does look like
> "we" spend a lot of time farting around with applications that really,
> aren't up to a niche community to support. I use VirtualBox on my O/I
> servers, but should it be bundled, or something that we get with source
> and compile ourselves?
>

Compiling from source isn't an answer. As those of us who package software
for
distribution know all too well, a lot of software simply doesn't build
cleanly from
source, or has a dependency tree that makes your eyes bleed. The effort here
isn't in packaging it for distribution, it's making the modifications
necessary to
make it build or work at all.

-- 
-Peter Tribble
http://www.petertribble.co.uk/ - http://ptribble.blogspot.com/