Illumos
| Company type | 501(c)6 trade association (dissolved) |
|---|---|
| Industry | Software / Operating Systems |
| Founded | 2012 |
| Founder | Garrett D'Amore |
| Defunct | 2024 |
| Fate | Dissolved |
| Headquarters | United States |
Key people | Jason Hoffman, Evan Powell, Garrett D'Amore |
Illumos (presented as "illumos") is a partially open-source and free Unix operating system that has been under development since 2010. It originates from OpenSolaris after Oracle ceased its support. Illumos comprises a kernel, device drivers, system libraries, and administrative utility software. This core platform forms the basis for multiple open-source Illumos distributions, much like how the Linux kernel serves as the foundation for numerous Linux distributions.
Name
The project maintainers prefer writing illumos entirely in lowercase to avoid confusion between a lowercase l and uppercase I in certain typefaces. The name is a fusion of the Latin term illuminare (meaning to illuminate) combined with OS, denoting Operating System.
History and development
On August 3, 2010, Illumos was introduced as a community-driven effort led by key Solaris engineers aiming to produce a fully open-source Solaris by substituting proprietary components in OpenSolaris with open-source alternatives. OpenSolaris itself is derived from System V Release 4 (SVR4) and the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD).
At its inception, Illumos was not designed to be a standalone distribution or a software fork. However, following Oracle's termination of OpenSolaris, Illumos forked the final Solaris ON kernel to allow independent progression. Early work concentrated on libc, the NFS lock manager, cryptographic modules, and device drivers to assemble a Solaris-like operating system free from proprietary components. By 2012, the focus shifted away from Oracle's proprietary Studio compiler toward the open source GCC. The userland is constructed using GNU make and incorporates numerous GNU utilities such as GNU tar.
Leadership has featured founder Garrett D'Amore alongside community contributors including Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, organized through a Developers' Council.
As of 2019, the core Illumos project, illumos-gate, originates from OS/Net (ON), which consists of a Solaris kernel with drivers, essential libraries, and fundamental utilities structured similarly to a BSD source tree. Initially reliant on OpenSolaris OS/Net, Illumos branched off following Oracle's discontinuation of Solaris development and the OpenSolaris project.
Features
- ZFS, an integrated file system combined with logical volume management, delivers robust data integrity for extensive storage environments.
- Solaris Containers (Zones), an operating-system-level virtualization solution with minimal overhead compatible with both x86 and SPARC architectures.
- DTrace, a dynamic tracing toolset designed for live diagnostics of kernel and application performance issues in production settings.
- Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM), offering virtualization capabilities with native processor support for hardware virtualization extensions.
- OpenSolaris Network Virtualization and Resource Control (Crossbow), enabling internal network virtualization alongside quality of service features such as virtual NICs (VNICs), dedicated IP zones, bandwidth regulation, and flow control at both interface and VNIC levels.
Distributions
- DilOS, a distribution that utilizes Debian's package management system (dpkg combined with apt) and supports virtualization, compatible with both x86-64 and SPARC architectures.
- NexentaStor, engineered for virtualization environments, storage area networks, network-attached storage, and uses the ZFS file system to support iSCSI and Fibre Channel implementations.
- OmniOS Community Edition, a streamlined operating system designed specifically for server use.
- OpenIndiana, a fork and continuation of the original OpenSolaris platform.
- SmartOS, created for cloud computing purposes, featuring built-in Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) capabilities.
- Helios, the operating system behind Oxide Computer's Rack infrastructure.
- Tribblix, blending classic design principles with contemporary elements, available for both x86-64 and SPARC systems.
- v9os, a minimalistic, server-oriented distribution based on IPS, tailored for SPARC hardware.
- XStreamOS, focused on infrastructure, cloud services, and web application development.
Discontinued:
- Dyson, built upon Debian, incorporating libc and the Service Management Facility (SMF) initialization framework.
- OpenSXCE, developed for system administrators and developers working on IA-32/x86-64 and SPARC platforms.
Illumos Foundation
Founded in California in 2012 as a 501(c)6 trade association, the Illumos Foundation counted among its initial board members Jason Hoffman (formerly with Joyent), Evan Powell (Nexenta), and Garrett D'Amore. As of 2024, the foundation is officially recorded as "dissolved" in the state of California.
External links
- napp-it, a web-based ZFS management interface designed for Illumos-powered NAS and SAN systems.