Talk:Illumos

Untitled discussion
@ 87.174.126.240:

I wish to address your concerns about the notability of the project and the objectivity of my article. Thereafter, I will delete your proposition for deletion.

However, please allow me first to comment on your style. You will need to admit on further thought, that while you are accusing a conflict of interest and positive bias to the Illumos project, you yourself chose to remain anonymous. This does neither enhance your self-assumed status of neutrality, neither does it enhance your credibility. I do not mean to offend you, I, however, am offended as much by your self-proclaimed righteousness "irrelevant, not neutral" as also by your derogatory rudeness "more than ten users". On your (false) assumption of me being closely connected with the Illumos project, I do not wish to comment further safe for one point: I admit that I might be, though not affiliated, not exactly neutral, but show me please a single item in the article contesting positions of others or being, in one form or the other, debatable, disputable or dubious. As long as no subject of debate arises here, your argument of close connection goes astray and is simply irrelevant.

Ad rem: You state Illumos to be a new project. This is true and will be true for a while (until Illumos cannot be considered new any more, depending on your point of view). Nothing different was stated in the article. Additionally, many things are new and relevant nevertheless. There is notability even in things very new, whether there is endurance, and here I concede your point, remains to be seen and is, more generally speaking, difficult to assess ex ante. However, your stance was directed against notability, and this I counter with vehemence. Please care to look at the names of the Illumos community, andyou will note chief architects and of the Solaris system, Garret D'Amore, Ben Rockwood, Jörg Schilling to name but a few, behind the project. Care to look at the corporations sponsoring Illumos, and you will note that the importance of entities such as Nexenta, Joyent or BerliOS cannot easily be denied. So much for notability. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.174.126.240 (talk) 2010-08-06T15:58:42 (UTC)

Illum ... ... does not mean "light" in Latin — Preceding unsigned comment added by Carusus (talk • contribs) 13:37, 3 October 2021 (UTC)

entire OS or just a kernel
I illumos an entire operating system, or just a kernel? The current intro is not clear on that. Also, is it a fork of OpenSolaris or a fork of Solaris 11? What components of OpenSolaris/Solaris are proprietary and intended to be replaced with FOSS implementations? Is this like Darwin, where the device drivers are kept proprietary and the system does not even boot without them? ScotXW (talk) 17:04, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
 * http://wiki.illumos.org/display/illumos/illumos+Home "This is the home of the illumos project, the fully open community fork of the OpenSolaris operating system."
 * http://openindiana.org/ "OpenIndiana is a robust enterprise operating system, based on the illumos kernel." ScotXW (talk) 17:11, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

Comparison to GNU/Linux
"Illumos has a similar role as the GNU/Linux kernel, which forms the basis for different Linux distributions."

There is no such thing as "the GNU/Linux kernel". There is the Linux kernel, and there is the GNU userland. I'm not quite sure what the intended comparison is here (they both form the basis for "distributions"?), but "operating system" or "stack" would be more accurate. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 192.94.235.20 (talk) 17:12, 25 February 2014 (UTC)

Capitalization of article title
As far as I can tell, MOS:TM requires the article title and subject to be capitalized as "Illumos" not "illumos". Opinions? -- intgr [talk] 08:19, 16 June 2015 (UTC)


 * You are right. I have revised the article to bring it into compliance with the guideline. --Joshua Issac (talk) 17:15, 19 April 2019 (UTC)


 * Usually yes, but there are exceptions. Diego (talk) 13:35, 24 April 2020 (UTC)


 * , this exception is quite narrow; MOS:TMLOWER refers to trademarks that begin with a lowercase letter where the second letter is capitalised. Many sources use the Illumos spelling rather than illumos, e.g. Phoronix, InfoWorld, Ars Technica, Heise, DZone so it also does not meet the criterion that it is "almost never written any other way", unlike iPhone. --Joshua Issac (talk) 10:44, 22 April 2021 (UTC)


 * I agree that the name should be written as "Illumos" in the article. It can be stated that the name is stylized as "illumos" in the first sentence. Somerandomuser (talk) 23:01, 28 April 2021 (UTC)


 * I've updated the article. Somerandomuser (talk) 01:49, 29 April 2021 (UTC)


 * I think we can this article as an additional example to the MOS documentation. This is a good example of an article name that should start with a capital letter. What are your thoughts? Somerandomuser (talk) 17:43, 19 May 2021 (UTC)


 * I agree with adding it as an example. Currently, there is just one example (Nintendo) there. You might also want to add a note on the talk page there. --Joshua Issac (talk) 19:49, 19 May 2021 (UTC)


 * Okay. I've added "Illumos" to the list on MOS:TMRULES. Thank you! Somerandomuser (talk) 20:11, 19 May 2021 (UTC)

Various issues
The illumos Foundation never occurred, because we could never get a resolution on bylaws and membership; as a consequence the effort was abandoned. As this is a contentious topic (not all parties are in 100% agreement as to the causes), I'd probably just remove the statements pertaining to the foundation entirely.

The illumos name is trademarked, and I'm the holder of the trademark. While I helped design the phoenix logo (actual logo was done by a professional graphic artist based on a napkin sketch I gave her), the logo itself was not covered in our trademark application. I'm not sure how - if at all - the trademark matters to wikipedia, but in the absence of the foundation it may help to make that matter clear. (The copyrights associated with the illumos code are the property of the respective authors of the code.)

Note also that code developed for illumos has at various times (and continuously still) been integrated into various BSD operating systems (not just DTrace and ZFS, but also locale handling in libc and localedef, the less(1) rewrite, and probably other things I cannot think of). Furthermore, illumos has also received code contributions from BSD operating systems; various device drivers were ported from FreeBSD, the locale work *started* with BSD implementations (though it was mostly rewritten for illumos before going *back* to the BSDs), a few system utilities, etc. I would be grateful if some nice editor could underscore the level of code sharing between the BSDs and illumos.

illumos is the code base consisting of an SVR4 kernel, device drivers, core system utilities and libraries. It is most of the core of what you'd need for a POSIX-compliant operating system, but is itself not independently usable. Instead, as with Linux, you'd use this as the core for a larger distribution, which would include possibly graphics components, further utilities, additional system software (e.g. a web server, etc.) End users only see illumos in the context of a distribution.

Note that as the founder and a significant illumos contributor, I *am* a primary source. So I cannot really edit the wiki article on illumos myself (per wikipedia rules).

Phoronix may be a neutral 3rd party site for references, for example: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTU2MDQ

Also, these slides from Dan (who modified/evolved them from earlier slides I wrote) may be useful. I'm not sure if he's a primary source, but he's a little less biased than I am: https://fosdem.org/2016/schedule/event/illumos_overview/attachments/audio/873/export/events/attachments/illumos_overview/audio/873/FOSDEM_2016.pdf  -- this slide also helps explain the "kernel" vs. distribution thing in the illumos context.

I can be reached via email (google around, its not hard to find me) if there are questions here that I can answer which might help improve the quality of this article. Thanks. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Gedamore (talk • contribs) 17:54, 8 April 2016 (UTC)

Supposed rationale for lower-case name
This part of the lead isn't supported by references and appears speculative:


 * "The maintainers write illumos in lowercase[6] since some computer fonts do not clearly distinguish a lowercase L from an uppercase i (see homoglyph)."

The project's FAQ page states without elaboration:


 * "pronounced i-llu-MOS and written in lowercase"

--2003:C9:4721:1F00:91A:1EC6:B20D:834D (talk) 23:37, 28 February 2021 (UTC)


 * Please refer to the previous discussion section here. Yes, you are correct that the organization prefers the name being written as "illumos", but that is a stylistic choice. With some exceptions, since the name of this operating system is a pronoun, it should start with a capital letter. Somerandomuser (talk) 17:31, 19 May 2021 (UTC)


 * That is a different issue. The problem 2003:C9:4721:1F00:91A:1EC6:B20D:834D identifies is the lack of references for the claim about computer fonts influencing the stylistic choice. I could not find any references for this, so I have deleted the claim from the article. --Joshua Issac (talk) 23:09, 23 May 2021 (UTC)


 * I have added it back with a reference. --Joshua Issac (talk) 23:25, 23 May 2021 (UTC)


 * Original IP here. Thank you for your diligence. --88.70.70.157 (talk) 01:40, 5 January 2022 (UTC)