OpenIndiana
| Company type | Open source project |
|---|---|
| Industry | Operating system |
| Founded | 2010 |
| Founder | Alasdair Lumsden |
| Products | OpenIndiana operating system |
| Parent | illumos Foundation |
| Website | www |
OpenIndiana is a free, open-source illumos-based operating system compatible with both SPARC and x86-64 architectures. It originated in 2010 as a fork of OpenSolaris following Oracle Corporation's decision to discontinue the latter. Its lineage traces back to UNIX System V Release 4.
The initiative was started by Alasdair Lumsden and is currently overseen by the illumos Foundation, which is responsible for the ongoing development and maintenance of the illumos OS. OpenIndiana’s objective is to serve as the de facto OpenSolaris platform for production environments, providing complimentary security patches and bug resolutions.
History
The name OpenIndiana pays homage to Project Indiana, the internal codename used by Sun Microsystems for OpenSolaris prior to Oracle’s acquisition in 2010.
Origins
Project Indiana, spearheaded by Ian Murdock—the founder of Debian Linux—was Sun Microsystems’ effort to produce a binary distribution derived from OpenSolaris source code.
OpenIndiana was created amidst uncertainty during Oracle’s acquisition of Sun Microsystems, with the goal of preserving the development and availability of an OpenSolaris-based operating system. This prompted developers to initiate a fork after Oracle announced it would cease support for OpenSolaris.
Initial reaction
The official announcement of OpenIndiana took place on September 14, 2010, at London’s JISC Centre, coinciding with the release of its initial, experimental version. This timing was deliberately chosen to precede Oracle OpenWorld and counter Solaris 11 Express.
The launch attracted considerable attention: online viewership exceeded 350 participants, the ISO download count surpassed 2,000, and the project’s Twitter account quickly amassed over 500 followers. Major IT media outlets provided extensive coverage of the release. Network traffic also increased substantially, necessitating additional server capacity.
Nonetheless, some critics questioned Solaris’ competitiveness relative to Linux, while others expressed concerns about the unproven nature of the release and absence of a formal development timeline. The first OpenIndiana build was explicitly described as experimental and directly based on the latest OpenSolaris development branch.
Community building
Following the transition of OpenSolaris’ binary distributions to SolarisExpress and the discontinuation of its real-time update stream, apprehensions arose regarding OpenIndiana’s sustainability if Oracle halted source code contributions. To mitigate this risk, the project redirected its source code feed through the illumos Foundation.
Concerns about losing access to Oracle’s proprietary compiler were addressed by adapting OpenIndiana to utilize the open-source GNU Compiler Collection for building software.
The Hardware Compatibility List (HCL) remains informal and dispersed, requiring users to conduct extensive research when selecting hardware. This fragmentation results from Oracle hosting the original OpenSolaris HCL on their servers without publicly releasing the Device Driver Utility submission source code.
In August 2012, founding leader Alasdair Lumsden stepped down due to personal reasons and dissatisfaction with slow progress caused by limited developer resources. He acknowledged that the project's ambitious scope surpassed what the initial team could manage.
Since then, OpenIndiana has continued as a fully community-driven project maintained by volunteers operating in a horizontal organizational structure.
Media reception
A review published in September 2013 on DistroWatch observed that the OpenIndiana initiative seemed to be experiencing a gradual downturn, showing minimal advancement since the OpenSolaris release five years prior:
A similar assessment from May 2015 reiterated these concerns, emphasizing limited package availability and weaker hardware compatibility relative to other platforms, while also pointing out that numerous system administration capabilities had been duplicated or adapted for Linux and BSD environments:
The issue of package availability is somewhat alleviated by OpenIndiana Hipster’s methodology: it maintains over 3500 software packages without imposing artificial segmentation common in many Linux distributions. The Image Packaging System (IPS) facilitates file-based incremental updates alongside package facets, preventing unnecessary division. Over a span of two years, Hipster successfully migrated and refreshed more than 1500 packages, preserving a carefully managed collection while also utilizing external repositories such as SFE for additional software. Furthermore, the pkgsrc framework supported by Joyent offers access to upwards of 20,000 packages tailored for illumos-based platforms.
Relation to other operating systems
The project’s objective is to provide a System V family operating system that is binary-compatible with Oracle Solaris 11 and Solaris 11 Express. Unlike OpenSolaris, which was derived from the OS/Net consolidation, OpenIndiana is constructed upon illumos. It employs the same Image Packaging System (IPS) package manager originally used by OpenSolaris.
While initially relying on Oracle’s publicly accessible source code, starting with the oi_151a Development Builds released in September 2011, OpenIndiana transitioned entirely to illumos. The project has phased out Oracle-owned development tools like Sun Studio; since 2013—including in the actively maintained Hipster branch—all compilations have been built exclusively using the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC). Notably, the illumos project itself adopted GCC as its primary compiler in June 2012.
Release schedule
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| Experimental Builds | Development Builds | Hipster/Gnome | Hipster/MATE |
Experimental releases
The initial experimental version of OpenIndiana, Build 147, was made available on September 14, 2010, with the subsequent Build 148 released on December 17, 2010.
| Version | Date | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| oi_147 | September 10, 2010 | |
| oi_148 | December 17, 2010 |
Development releases
Build 151, launched on September 14, 2011, marked the first release based on illumos. The inaugural SPARC build, named MartUX 151a0, appeared in September 2012. Following this, Build 151a7 for Intel and AMD processors was released in October 2012, with Build 151a8 arriving in August 2013. The OpenSXCE 2013.01 SPARC Build 151a, previously known as MartUX, was issued in February 2013 as the second and likely final SPARC build under OpenIndiana; subsequent SPARC versions transitioned to DilOS.
| Version | Date | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| oi_151a0 | September 19, 2011 | |
| oi_151a1 | January 26, 2012 | |
| oi_151a2 | February 13, 2012 | |
| oi_151a3 | April 12, 2012 | |
| oi_151a4 | May 4, 2012 | |
| oi_151a5 | July 2, 2012 | |
| oi_151a6 | September 4, 2012 | |
| oi_151a7 | October 6, 2012 | |
| oi_151a8 | August 10, 2013 | |
| oi_151a9 | January 18, 2014 |
Hipster branch
Introduced in late 2013, the Hipster project was designed to revamp OpenIndiana by adopting a development strategy that better facilitates community involvement compared to the original OpenSolaris model. Hipster functions as a rolling-release distribution with rapid updates, utilizing the oi-userland build framework alongside continuous integration practices.
This branch receives ongoing maintenance featuring regular software enhancements, security fixes, and biannual installation media distributions. Announcements for each release are communicated through mailing lists and social channels. The inaugural Hipster snapshot was published on February 14, 2014 after a six-month development period.
Notable business-centric capabilities of Hipster include:
- Adoption of the MATE desktop environment as the default since version 2016.10
- Enhanced illumos KVM virtualization features
- Updated graphics infrastructure incorporating recent Xorg and DRM improvements
- Inclusion of FUSE and NTFS-3G filesystem support
- Multimedia application availability alongside third-party repositories such as SFE for LibreOffice access
- Migration to GCC as the primary compiler toolchain
- Integration of legacy software projects into a consolidated build system
Progress on feature additions is documented within the project's official roadmap.
| Version | Date | Notes | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2014.02 | February 14, 2014 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 2014.07 | July 1, 2014 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 2014.10 | October 12, 2014 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 2015.03 | March 30, 2015 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 2015.10 | October 3, 2015 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 2016.04 | April 21, 2016 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 2016.10 | October 30, 2016 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 2017.04 | May 2, 2017 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 2017.10 | October 31, 2017 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 2018.04 | April 27, 2018 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 2018.10 | October 23, 2018 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 2019.04 | May 11, 2019 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 2019.10 | November 6, 2019 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 2020.04 | May 4, 2020 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 2020.10 | October 31,2020 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 2021.04 | May1 ,2021 | - | 2021.10 | December5 ,2021 | - | 2022.10 | December4 ,2022 | - | 2023.04 | April21 ,2023 | - | 2023.05 | May4 ,2023 | - | 2023.10 | October28 ,2023 | - | 2024.04 | April28 ,2024 | - | 2024.10 | October26 ,2024 |
External links
- Comprehensive hardware compatibility list
- Official Announcement of OpenIndiana Coverage on OSNews