On Thu, Sep 14, 2017 at 11:07 AM, Jorge Schrauwen <[email protected]> wrote:
> Just a short reply, we (illumos) have a lot of awesome thing that > are/were very innovative like mentioned before, zfs, zones, crossbow,... > > There are a few areas were we drop the ball too, perhaps focusing on those > is also a good way to spend time. On things like IPv6 for example, we have > many small issues were we do not implement stuff or do thing that are not > per-se RFC non compliant but make it very frustrating from a user > > A simple example... adding a IPv6 static route that is presistant across > reboots. > in.ndpd will also inject all routers it finds via RA with metric of 1... > which makes > traffic flow to them too. > > I believe we do not necessarily need to always be pushing the inovation, > but > polishing some rough corners seems like something we could and maybe should > focus on. > In terms of the features we have, there are 3 issues we could look at: 1. Areas where we have a mature and heavily used implementation, but it needs more polishing and finishing off. You've identified IPv6 as one example, but I would say that most of the other headline features (zones, smf, pretty much everything) aren't 100% done yet, even though we use them all the time and they do most of what we want. 2. Some features are just incomplete prototypes. The one that comes to my mind is ilb (the integrated load balancer). Should they be scrapped or brought up to scratch? 3. The biggest thing for me though is that the innovative features provide an abolutely solid foundation, but what's lacking are higher-level constructs or easy to use interfaces built on them. I mean SMF is great, but who on earth would think that editing XML files makes for a good user experience? Zones are great, but creating them by hand is a pain. There's a desparate need for higher-level tooling (and APIs) to make using the features we have far more pleasant - and by making them easy to use you unlock the more advanced features and allow people to innovate atop them. > (That being said, I am still working my way to Solaris Internals and my > lack of C > leaves me hopelessly confused, so aside from testing and some docs every > one > and then I am of no great help myself in fixing some of these things) > > Regards > > Jorge > > > On 2017-09-13 22:01, Peter Tribble wrote: > > In my OpenSolaris t-shirt collection, I have one with the slogan: > > "Innovation happens everywhere" > > I'm not sure this is *entirely* true; Solaris 10 was a massive nexus > of innovation that has proliferated out to other operating systems > over the last decade. Frankly, there's not much else been happening > in systems development. > > From what I can see, between the cloying boredom of Linux monoculture > and the dead hand of POSIX "standardisation", systems have stagnated. > > Even in illumos, we're largely doing a bit of light gardening - a bit > of weeding here, a bit of pruning there, replanting the odd bush. But > no real landscaping is being done. > > Which begs the question - is systems innovation done and dusted? > > Or is there more to come? > > And if there is more, what sort of new features are wanted? > > At which point I open up the floor to anyone who wants to contribute. > > (Note: I'm not talking about a gaps analysis. We [illumos] need more > drivers, more applications ported. We already know that, and it's just > copying, not innovation. So there is an interesting subject there, but > if someone wants to follow that then please create a new thread.) > > Cheers, > > -- > -Peter Tribble > http://www.petertribble.co.uk/ - http://ptribble.blogspot.com/ > *illumos-discuss* | Archives > <https://illumos.topicbox.com/groups/discuss/discussions/T83f198c8597cf8e3-M120241295215f3f1fa5cb2c0> > | Powered by Topicbox <https://topicbox.com> > > -- -Peter Tribble http://www.petertribble.co.uk/ - http://ptribble.blogspot.com/ ------------------------------------------ illumos-discuss Archives: https://illumos.topicbox.com/groups/discuss/discussions/T83f198c8597cf8e3-M6f1f85ca47f704d40cae7e1b Powered by Topicbox: https://topicbox.com
