Unleashed 1.0: a new Illumos distribution released

[Sehnsucht94]

A newborn Illumos project, Unleashed OS, just annouced and committed its first formal release. Notable features about the project uncovered on the devel@unleashed-os.org mailing list:

A '-' means that the support for that feature was removed, a '+' means that
the support for that feature was added, and a '*' means that the behavior
was changed.

 - 32-bit x86 kernel support (32-bit x86 applications are still supported)
 - sparc support
 - xen domU and dom0 support
 - Trusted Solaris aka. Trusted Extensions
 - SVR4 pkg support & code
 - solaris10 zone brand
 - GRUB
 - ndd(8) (use ipadm(8) and dladm(8) instead)
 - closed source components were removed, including:
   - in.iked(8) and related utilities
   - kmdb modules: mpt and nfs
   - kernel drivers: atiatom, bnx, ixgb, sdpib, usbser_edge, glm, mpt, adpu320,
     bcm_sata, lsimega, marvel88sx, acpi_toshiba, intel_nhmex
 - avs ("Sun StorageTek Availability Suite")
 - tcopy(1)
 - /usr/ucb and libbc ("SunOS/BSD Compatibility Package")
 - rdist(1), rcp(1), rlogin(1), rlogind(1m), rsh(1), rshd(1m)
 - uucp services (uuencode and uudecode are still present)
 - libslp, slpd ("Service Location Protocol daemon")
 - Java bits: poold(8), libzfs_jni, libadt_jni, libdtrace_jni,  DTrace Java
   support, parts of libdns_sd
 - Sun Studio and lint build support
 - getpwent_r(3c), fgetpwent_r(3c), which are non-standard and were different
   from other OSes
 - getpw(3c)
 - POSIX.1c Draft versions of several reentrant functions were removed.
   Applications using the draft versions have to be modified; users of the
   standard versions are unaffected.
    - readdir_r
    - getpwuid_r
    - getpwnam_r
 - c_synonyms.so
 - drop support for Riyadh87, Riyadh88, and Riyadh89 timezones
 - routeadm(1m), svc:/network/routing/legacy-routing,
   svc:/network/ipv[46]-forwarding removed. use ipadm to manage forwarding and
   smf to manage the routing-related daemons.
 - xpg4, xpg6 directories were removed, utilities moved to /usr/bin.
 - troff(1), nroff(1), addbib(1), checknr(1), deroff(1), diffmk(1), eqn(1),
   indxbib(1), lookbib(1), refer(1), roffbib(1), soelim(1), tbl(1), ul(1),
   vgrind(1), /usr/bin/makedev /usr/bin/ta removed -- made obsolete by mandoc
 - pre-XPG5 behavior: ungetwc(3c), putwchar(3c), putwc(3c), fputwc(3c),
   fputws(3c), fgetwc(3c), getwc(3c), getwchar(3c), fgetws(3c)
 - C89 behavior: fprintf(3c), fscanf(3c), fwprintf(3c), fwscanf(3c),
   printf(3c), scanf(3c), snprintf(3c), sprintf(3c), sscanf(3c),
   swprintf(3c), swscanf(3c), vfprintf(3c), vfscanf(3c), vfwprintf(3c),
   vfwscanf(3c), vprintf(3c), vscanf(3c), vsnprintf(3c), vsprintf(3c),
   vsscanf(3c), vswprintf(3c), vswscanf(3c), vwprintf(3c), vwscanf(3c),
   wprintf(3c), wscanf(3c)
 + awk(1) replaced with a version imported from FreeBSD
 + libcurses, libxcurses, libxcurses2, terminfo were replaced by ncurses
 + grep(1) replaced with a version imported from FreeBSD
 + errc(3), warnc(3) were added to libc
 + fts(3) added to libc
 + reallocarray(3) added to libc
 + LibreSSL (libcrypto, libssl, libtls, openssl(1), nc(1)) added
 + cpio-formatted boot archives
 * man(1) is mandoc. mandoc.db support added, eliminating the need for
   manpage symlinks.
 * socket interfaces are now in libc. libsocket, libxnet and libnsl remain as
   filter libraries.
 * socket implementation was modified to be more reasonable by default, and it
   is no longer possible to choose an alternate socket implementation.
   msg_accrights was removed and msg_control members are now always visible in
   struct msghdr.
   Documentation was updated and moved to section 2: accept(2), bind(2),
   connect(2), getpeername(2), getsockname(2), getsockopt(2), listen(2),
   recv(2), send(2), shutdown(2), socket(2), socketpair(2), and the new
   sockatmark(2) and CMSG_DATA(3)
 * make(1) is bmake(1) instead of dmake(1)
 * sed(1) replaced with a version imported from FreeBSD
 * locale data has been updated to CLDR v28; tools to generate it were imported
   from FreeBSD. This fixes many character classification errors.
 * install(1m) was replaced by install(1) from OpenBSD.
 * all process security flags are on by default
 * putwchar(3c), putwc(3c), fputwc(3c), and fputws(3c) have only XPG5 behavior
 * man pages from section 1M have been moved to section 8; third party code
   (libncurses, namely) is not affected

[Sehnsucht94]

Unleashed 1.2 has just been released; noticeable the LibreSSL, OpenSSH and GCC updates, and the deprecation of Solaris BSM audit subsystem (which can still be found inside FreeBSD base), as well as the libxnet and libsocket filter libraries

[bashrules]

Originally Posted by Sensucht94

'-' means that the support for that feature was removed
...
 - sparc support

Heathens!

[Sehnsucht94]

SPARC has become a second class citizen on Illumos ever since the demise of OpenSXCE (2013-2014). The leading commercial Illumos vendors Joyent, Nexenta and, up until 2018, Delphix, seemingly didn't want to invest into SPARC, being it tightly linked to Oracle; supporting old SPARC hardware probably just appeared nonsense. That said, SPARC support on Illumos for legacy Sun hardware is kept alive by few hobbyist projects: Tribblix (my illumos distribution of choice, really worth a try if you like either NetBSD or Slackware), v9os and DilOS

[JWJones]

Well, the FINAL (1.4) release was today:

This is the fifth and final release of Unleashed - an operating system fork
of illumos. For more information about Unleashed itself and the download
links, see our website [1].

That is right, we are pulling the plug on this project. What began as a
hobby project for two developers never grew much beyond being a hobby
project for two developers. But after nearly 4 years of work, we
proved that the illumos code base can be cleaned up significantly, its APIs
modernized, and the user experience improved in general.

Too bad, it seemed like a great project to me.

[Sehnsucht94]

See:
Unleashed: The Birth (and Death) of an Operating System Fork

Originally Posted by JWJones

Too bad, it seemed like a great project to me.

It was, especially considered it was no more than a 'four-handed work'. I used Unleashed for a good year on desktop, solid and reliable OS, Illumos done right. I liked and endorsed their approach, and wish them the best for the days to come.

These days I don't have that much time to spend playing with Illumos any longer, nor supported hardware to run it onto bare-metal, but I still boot Tribblix from time to time, just to remember myself how wonderful Solaris is

[bashrules]

Originally Posted by Sensucht94

SPARC has become a second class citizen on Illumos ever since the demise of OpenSXCE (2013-2014). The leading commercial Illumos vendors Joyent, Nexenta and, up until 2018, Delphix, seemingly didn't want to invest into SPARC, being it tightly linked to Oracle; supporting old SPARC hardware probably just appeared nonsense. That said, SPARC support on Illumos for legacy Sun hardware is kept alive by few hobbyist projects: Tribblix (my illumos distribution of choice, really worth a try if you like either NetBSD or Slackware), v9os and DilOS

The revolution devours its children.

[aimeec1995]

Illumos without sparc is gross, dropped those projects when they dropped sparc.
Next year it will be them switching to the linux kernel and acting like its a sane decision