OpenIndiana 2016.10

[gea]

OpenIndiana

There are several distributions of a free Solaris fork. Development is done as a common effort at the Illumos project. This idea is similar to the development of Linux vs distributions like Ubuntu. Additionally to smaller contributors there are the main contributors to Illumos like Delphix, Nexenta, OmniOS, OpenIndiana and SmartOS, a Samsung owned company.

A very special distribution is OpenIndiana that gains a lot of attraction in the last two years. It is the only Illumos project that is intended to be a successor of OpenSolaris with the variants minimal_text_edition, text_edition and a GUI version with Mate. It is a real community project that is very near to the Illumos upstream. Currently it offers a snapshot every 6 months with ongoing development between and the option to add the newest bits with a pkg update.

I support OpenIndiana (OI) from the beginning (beside OmniOS and Oracle Solaris). Two years ago OI was the default napp-it platform. I was thinking about using OI as default in future especially with the GUI option that allows remote web and vnc access, local napp-it management via Firefox, local filemanagement and Timeslider, a killer feature where you can open a folder in the filebrowser and go back in time over snaps.

more: openindiana – Community-driven illumos Distribution
Setup (barebone and under ESXi): http://www.napp-it.org/doc/downloads/setup_openindiana.pdf

 

[T_Minus]

Appreciate the heads up and history @gea

What made you go from OI to OmniOS 2 years ago? Is it still a concern?

 

[i386]

My guess it's becuase of the rolling release model.
OpenIndiana Releases - OpenIndiana - OpenIndiana Wiki

We try to ship up-to-date illumos-gate and userland software. As work for migration from old build systems to oi-userland is still not complete, some soft in OpenIndiana can be rather outdated and /hipster receive major updates. As result, breakages can happen. We try hard to avoid this. But be warned.

 

[gea]

The main reasons for the move two years ago was the slow development of OI at that time. This changed a lot with OI Hipster where you get more or less a current Illumos. Another aspect was the stable with a dedicated repository and bugfixes/ security fixes on OmniOS and a separate bloody for development with another repo.

There are discussions now at OI to add some sort of a stable freeze with its own repository and fixes (optionally not for the full Hipster project with GUI but at least for a minimalistic server edition like OmniOS) and the rolling updates for development. I hope for that,

 

[gea]

I have initiated a German edu mirror for OmniOS repositories (zip files)
and OI/OmniOS iso/usb setup images at Index of /

and OmniOS 151014,18,20,22 repositories
http://openzfs.hfg-gmuend.de:51014
http://openzfs.hfg-gmuend.de:51018
http://openzfs.hfg-gmuend.de:51020
http://openzfs.hfg-gmuend.de:51022

and a new setup manual
http://www.napp-it.org/doc/downloads/setup_napp-it_os.pdf