Illumos (stylized as " illumos") is a partly free and open-source Unix operating system.
Name
The maintainers write
illumos in lowercase,
since some
do not clearly distinguish a lowercase
L from an uppercase
i:
Il (see
homoglyph).
The project name is a combination of words
illuminare from the Latin for
to light, and
OS for
Operating System.
History and development
Illumos was announced via
webinar on 3 August 2010,
as a community effort of a group of core Solaris engineers to create a truly open source Solaris, by swapping closed source bits of
OpenSolaris with open implementations.
[Archived at Ghostarchive and the
]
target="_blank" rel="nofollow"> Wayback Machine: OpenSolaris itself is based on System V Release 4 (SVR4) and the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD).
The original plan explicitly stated that Illumos would not be a distribution or a fork. However, after Oracle announced the discontinuation of OpenSolaris, plans were made to fork the final version of the Solaris ON kernel, allowing Illumos to evolve into a kernel of its own.[
"Oracle’s Sun Studio has been replaced with the open source GNU GCC compiler."] The "userland" software is now built with GNU make,
As of 2019 its primary development project, illumos-gate, derives from OS/Net (aka ON),[
][
][
]
Features
-
ZFS, a combined file system with integrated logical volume management, providing a high level of data integrity for very large storage capacities.
-
Solaris Containers (or Zones), a low overhead implementation of operating-system-level virtualization technology for x86 and SPARC systems.
-
DTrace, a comprehensive dynamic tracing framework for troubleshooting kernel and application problems on production systems in real time.
-
Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM), a virtualization infrastructure. KVM supports native virtualization on processors with hardware virtualization extensions.
-
OpenSolaris Network Virtualization and Resource Control (or Crossbow), a set of features that provides an internal network virtualization and quality of service including: virtual NIC (VNIC) pseudo-network interface technology, exclusive ip zones, bandwidth management, and flow control on a per interface and per VNIC basis.
Distributions
Distributions, at illumos.org
-
DilOS, with Debian package manager (dpkg + apt) and virtualization support, available for x86-64 and SPARC.
-
NexentaStor, distribution optimized for virtualization, storage area networks, network-attached storage, and iSCSI or Fibre Channel applications employing the ZFS file system.
-
OmniOS Community Edition, takes a minimalist approach suitable for server use.
-
OpenIndiana, a distribution that is a continuation and fork in the spirit of the OpenSolaris operating system.
-
SmartOS, a distribution for cloud computing with Kernel-based Virtual Machine integration.
-
Helios, a distribution powering the Oxide Computer Rack.
[ ]
-
Tribblix, retro style distribution with modern components, available for x86-64 and SPARC.
-
v9os, a server-only, IPS-based minimal SPARC distribution.
-
XStreamOS, a distribution for infrastructure, cloud, and web development.
Discontinued:
-
Dyson, derived from Debian using libc, and SMF init system.
-
OpenSXCE, distribution for developers and system administrators for IA-32/x86-64 x86 platforms and SPARC.
Illumos Foundation
The
Illumos Foundation was incorporated in the
California in 2012 as a 501(c)6 trade association, with founding board members Jason Hoffman (formerly at
Joyent), Evan Powell (
Nexenta), and Garrett D'Amore.
As of 2024, its status in California is "dissolved".[State of California Department of Justice, Office of the Attorney General. Registry of Charities and Fundraisers. Accessed December 17, 2024.]
Notes
External links
-
-
napp-it, a ZFS web interface for Illumos-based NAS or SAN appliances.
