3 ms·

I have fond memories of a few decades of using/managing Solaris machines, and I've often considered running OpenIndiana on a Thinkpad. Has anyone tried this? Ho

I have fond memories of a few decades of using/managing Solaris machines, and I've often considered running OpenIndiana on a Thinkpad. Has anyone tried this? How is the OpenIndiana support for commodity laptop hardware?

ncmncm 6y ago
Run it in VMs. The Qubes OS is optimized for this use case. Then Solaris sees a very stable device environment, removing most of the work in keeping an OS fresh.
- unixhero 6y ago
  Anyone actually use CubesOS?
  - ptrott2017 6y ago
    30K+ users according to the Micah Lee video on their website. I didnt know CubesOS till ncmncm posted about it in this thread, but it looks interesting enough to test drive for a while. If you want to learn more, recommend watching the video here: https://www.qubes-os.org/video-tours/ https://www.qubes-os.org/video-tours/
- mapgrep 6y ago
  I use both Qubes and SmartOS (like OpenIndiana, an illumos derivative) although not together. One advantage to using OpenIndiana directly on the laptop -- and I've not tried this, maybe it's too much pain -- would be you should get much more memory efficiency out of zones than you do out of QubesOS. Qubes relies on a type 1 hypervisor (Xen) so it is not nearly as efficient at reclaiming memory as an illumos/Solaris derivative, since Solaris zones are OS level virtualization (they are not under the illusion they have a whole machine to themselves so they are handling memory as flexibly, pretty much, as an application process). Qubes is notoriously memory hungry which can be an issue, especially on an ultralight laptop (the ThinkPad X1 for example still tops out at 16GB RAM which can actually be a little tight for Qubes). (There does seem to be some degree of memory reclamation which I assume is due to hosted OSes and maybe Xen itself evolving over time to respond intelligently to frequent changes in "installed" ram.) The downside I imagine would be 1> you don't get Qubes' security measures of isolating USB and the network stack into their own VMs, away from dom0 and 2> from what I gather there just isn't the same extent of specialized plumbing in OpenIndiana for a single user trying to do work across vms/zones - qubes has for example a little menu to redirect arbitrary usb devices into particular qubes, there is a gui flow for moving files securely between zones with explicit dom0 prompts/approval, there is a secure system for moving clipboards between vms, etc.
atemerev 6y ago
I tried it a few years ago on ThinkPad; seemed to work.

ncmncm 6y ago

Run it in VMs. The Qubes OS is optimized for this use case. Then Solaris sees a very stable device environment, removing most of the work in keeping an OS fresh.

unixhero 6y ago
Anyone actually use CubesOS?
- ptrott2017 6y ago
  30K+ users according to the Micah Lee video on their website. I didnt know CubesOS till ncmncm posted about it in this thread, but it looks interesting enough to test drive for a while. If you want to learn more, recommend watching the video here: https://www.qubes-os.org/video-tours/ https://www.qubes-os.org/video-tours/
mapgrep 6y ago
I use both Qubes and SmartOS (like OpenIndiana, an illumos derivative) although not together. One advantage to using OpenIndiana directly on the laptop -- and I've not tried this, maybe it's too much pain -- would be you should get much more memory efficiency out of zones than you do out of QubesOS. Qubes relies on a type 1 hypervisor (Xen) so it is not nearly as efficient at reclaiming memory as an illumos/Solaris derivative, since Solaris zones are OS level virtualization (they are not under the illusion they have a whole machine to themselves so they are handling memory as flexibly, pretty much, as an application process). Qubes is notoriously memory hungry which can be an issue, especially on an ultralight laptop (the ThinkPad X1 for example still tops out at 16GB RAM which can actually be a little tight for Qubes). (There does seem to be some degree of memory reclamation which I assume is due to hosted OSes and maybe Xen itself evolving over time to respond intelligently to frequent changes in "installed" ram.) The downside I imagine would be 1> you don't get Qubes' security measures of isolating USB and the network stack into their own VMs, away from dom0 and 2> from what I gather there just isn't the same extent of specialized plumbing in OpenIndiana for a single user trying to do work across vms/zones - qubes has for example a little menu to redirect arbitrary usb devices into particular qubes, there is a gui flow for moving files securely between zones with explicit dom0 prompts/approval, there is a secure system for moving clipboards between vms, etc.

atemerev 6y ago

I tried it a few years ago on ThinkPad; seemed to work.