Hi all, Although the lx brand is still present in the last binary release of OpenSolaris, snv_134, as one sees in the following thread, Oracle decided to cancel it:
http://opensolaris.org/jive/thread.jspa?threadID=129326&tstart=0 I haven't looked at the ON code base, but my guess is that support for the lx brand is not present in the code base that IllumOS has forked from. Have there been any thoughts regarding whether Illumos should keep the lx brand alive? I can understand why Oracle killed it: it is not something that a large enterprise would use, and kernel developers (at least those working on the Zones infrastructure) must take account of the lx brand even if they are not concerned with it directly, which creates a large code maintenance issue. Still, I find the lx brand very useful, since it allows one to run applications that have not been ported to OpenSolaris yet. Sun itself never bothered to update the lx brand to emulate the 2.6 Linux kernel, but an outside developer did this, although not all Linux system calls have been implemented, and some facilities, such as sound and NFS, do not work. Since the Linux 2.6 implementation of the lx Brand was never finished, clearly the lx brand is not appropriate for an operating system intended for enterprise-class production systems. But I think it can be appropriate for an open source OS. I'm not a kernel developer, so I don't have a very good idea of what's involved, nor could I develop and maintain the lx brand myself. But if Illumos takes off, someone may become inclined to put more work into the lx brand. So my concern at this point is whether it might be possible for Illumos not to shut the door entirely on the lx brand. Alex _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.illumos.org/m/listinfo/discuss
