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Helios: A distribution of Illumos powering the Oxide Rack

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Re: Helios: A distribution of Illumos powering the Oxide Rack

#261

Post by networked »

steveklabnik wrote: post #14
sneak wrote: post #2

I know they’re ex-Sun, but is there any real technical benefit for choosing not-Linux (for their business value prop)? I know of the technical benefits of illumos over linux, but does that actually matter to the customers who are buying these? Aren’t they opening a whole can of worms for ideology/tradition that won’t sell any more computers? As someone who runs Linux container workloads, the fact that this is fundame…

> does that actually matter to the customers who are buying these? It's not like we specifically say "oh btw there's illumos inside and that's why you should buy the rack." It's not a customer-facing detail of the product. I'm sure most will never even know that this is the case. What customers do care about is that the rack is efficient, reliable, suits their needs, etc. Choosing illumos instead of Linux here is a c…

If you publish the RFD, please submit it to HN. As a former (mostly former) FreeBSD user interested in bhyve, I would like to read the case for bhyve on illumos.

Re: Helios: A distribution of Illumos powering the Oxide Rack

#262

Post by 4ad »

sunshowers wrote: post #239
bbkane wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd like to learn DTrace (especially after the recent 20yr podcast episode), but I worry it'll never make into mainstream Linux debugging, and hence only useful for more niche jobs.

Your concern is completely reasonable -- a thing I'd add though is that both Windows and macOS have DTrace support.

DTrace in macOS was always a third class citizen, it never worked very well, and in fact, on arm64 machines it doesn't work at all (panics the kernel).

Re: Helios: A distribution of Illumos powering the Oxide Rack

#263

Post by 4ad »

bbkane wrote: post #240
sunshowers wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your concern is completely reasonable -- a thing I'd add though is that both Windows and macOS have DTrace support.

I was excited, but it looks like both MacOS and Windows require special admin permissions for my laptop that I doubt my work would approve (completely reasonable to require this, it just makes it unusable for me).

It's actually not reasonable to require this if you do it right. On Solaris and illumos DTrace works just fine for a normal user. You simply have access to fewer probes if you are less privileged.

Not the case on FreeBSD/Windows/macOS, where it's all or nothing. Still, on FreeBSD you just need root, on macOS you need to boot into a special kernel mode which doesn't even work on modern Apple Silicon machines.

Re: Helios: A distribution of Illumos powering the Oxide Rack

#264

Post by sunshowers »

4ad wrote: post #262
sunshowers wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your concern is completely reasonable -- a thing I'd add though is that both Windows and macOS have DTrace support.

DTrace in macOS was always a third class citizen, it never worked very well, and in fact, on arm64 machines it doesn't work at all (panics the kernel).

That's really unfortunate :(

Re: Helios: A distribution of Illumos powering the Oxide Rack

#265

Post by jjav »

rbanffy wrote: post #258
jjav wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I really miss Sun. There's nothing in the world I miss so much as Sun. I've done many startups post-Sun and there's been good highs and many lows but, there's nothing like a true hard-core tech company like Sun. There basically are no tech companies anymore, other than Apple, but they are mass-market consumer oriented which is not interesting.

> but they are mass-market consumer oriented which is not interesting. Kind of. Apple focuses their high end gear on creative professionals. Us Unix geeks have much more modest needs, which are often satisfied by the average uninspired Dell design. Still, Apple has a decent Unix underneath all that glitter. At the same time, there are almost no desktop-friendly Unixes besides the free crowd. HP and IBM have given up…

> Still, Apple has a decent Unix underneath all that glitter.

Had. That's what pulled me in to Apple laptops after spending the 90s convinced I'd never use a Mac.

With OS X, suddenly it was BSD, but with a Mac GUI! Cool. When OS X (10.0) came out I quickly bought a mac first time ever.

But Apple has spent the last 20+ years making OSX less and less BSD, locking out more and more core functionality into obscure nonstandard behavior.

Re: Helios: A distribution of Illumos powering the Oxide Rack

#266

Post by rbanffy »

jjav wrote: post #265
rbanffy wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but they are mass-market consumer oriented which is not interesting. Kind of. Apple focuses their high end gear on creative professionals. Us Unix geeks have much more modest needs, which are often satisfied by the average uninspired Dell design. Still, Apple has a decent Unix underneath all that glitter. At the same time, there are almost no desktop-friendly Unixes besides the free crowd. HP and IBM have given up…

> Still, Apple has a decent Unix underneath all that glitter. Had. That's what pulled me in to Apple laptops after spending the 90s convinced I'd never use a Mac. With OS X, suddenly it was BSD, but with a Mac GUI! Cool. When OS X (10.0) came out I quickly bought a mac first time ever. But Apple has spent the last 20+ years making OSX less and less BSD, locking out more and more core functionality into obscure nonsta…

Well... For me and a lot of people, it's still good enough - it runs MacPorts, Python, I can compile things and so on, but, TBH, I also have a couple Linux boxes lying around on my desk and on the network one hop away from my desk, so the deep hackability side is solved outside the Mac in my case.

Re: Helios: A distribution of Illumos powering the Oxide Rack

#267

Post by mixmastamyk »

lloydde wrote: post #215
alberth wrote: post #91

License MPL 2.0 is an interesting license choice, for an operating system. EDIT: why the downvotes?

MPL 2.0 has been the preferred license for CTO Bryan Cantrill and crew for more than a decade: “And because any conversation about open source has to address licensing at some point or another, let’s get that out of the way: we opted for the Mozilla Public License 2.0. While relatively new, there is a lot to like about this license: its file-based copyleft allows it to be proprietary-friendly while also forcing certa…

> file-based copyleft

> explicit warranting of original work obviates the need for CLAs

What do those terms mean?

Re: Helios: A distribution of Illumos powering the Oxide Rack

#268

Post by mixmastamyk »

temptemptemp111 wrote: post #106
steveklabnik wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yet most of that stuff is now buried/removed Nothing has changed with regards to our anti-blob and pro-open source stances. I am not sure what you're referring to here. > with unnecessary lock-in. What lock-in are you referring to here? The way that things run on the rack is via virtual machines, you can run virtual machines on many providers. We even have a terraform provider so that you can use familiar tools ins…

I don't expect anyone to see my comments unless they're really looking since I've been shadow banned for many years now - so I appreciate your reply. To be clearer regarding my questions: - What happened to Project X (supposedly coreboot++ for latest AMD CPUs)? It seems dead, despite being more reported on than Oxide's attempts in working with AMD (to achieve the same outcomes, presumably - what's the difference?). L…

I can see your comments because I have showdead on.
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