What will "OpenSolaris" be?

From: Will Hartung (willh_at_msoft.com)
Date: 01/28/05 

Date: Fri, 28 Jan 2005 11:15:19 -0800

I know, NDA and all, but it's worth a shot.

Some of the OpenSolaris insiders have been talking about how they can now
"build OpenSolaris", because they've got the source code now.

When they say "OpenSolaris", are they just talking the kernel? Or more than
that.

I ask this because I look at the OSS Unix landscape and see the differences.

Linux (as everyone screams and shouts), is a kernel, and then there are
indenpendent distributions released on top of it.

FreeBSD is "an operating system" where the kernel and the userland are
maintained and released as a whole. While you can get a "FreeBSD" kernel,
you typically don't. There are really multiple FreeBSD distributions, when
FreeBSD forks, the kernel is changing, not the userland.

Now there's mumblings about "Gentoo OpenSolaris", but that may just be a
port of their package system (to compete with something like Blastwave I
guess).

So, I guess my question, if anyone knows and can share, is whether the plan
will be for "OpenSolaris" to akin to Linux and its distros or more like
FreeBSD as a overarching, "monolithic" entity.

I'm hoping for a FreeBSD model, as the chaos of the Linuxen is one of the
things the leaves me cold, but in truth since Solaris 10 is a free RTU
anyway, there is probably room for a OpenSolaris "kernel" and a bunch of
distros to appease the those that enjoy the distro of the week solutions.

Regards,

Will Hartung
(willh@msoft.com)

Relevant Pages