5 ms·

Tribblix – The Retro Illumos Distribution

95 points by bilegeek 1y ago

hulitu 1y ago
> lightweight window managers are preferred over heavy desktop environments, the primary desktop option is Xfce, and MATE and Enlightenment are also available, plus many others I would expected CDE as a first class citizen and maybe OpenLook. And it says that it it maily for 32bit SPARC and 32bit X86 and later that "Important: 32-bit hardware support now completely removed.".
- cheaprentalyeti 1y ago
  I've been looking for a linux distribution that has olwm available but have had little luck. The closest I can find is a theme for icewm.
  - CTOSian 1y ago
    me as well, olvwm was last time in Debian Jessie, now only on NetBSD as package
    - pabs3 1y ago
      Looks like Debian removed olvwm/olwm because they were incompatible with 64-bit and unmaintained. https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/xview https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/xview https://tracker.debian.org/news/1000764/removed-32p14-282-from-unstable/ https://tracker.debian.org/news/1000764/removed-32p14-282-fr... https://bugs.debian.org/911787 https://bugs.debian.org/911787
      - ptribble 1y ago
        It's never going to be maintained... But there is a 64-bit port (which I ought to bring in to Tribblix) https://github.com/ggodd/xview-64bit https://github.com/ggodd/xview-64bit
        romforth 1y ago
        Feel free to check out https://github.com/olvwm/xview/ https://github.com/olvwm/xview/ as well. I wanted to run olvwm on Linux (when it went out of support on Ubuntu 16.04) and I'd managed to get this running on Ubuntu 20.04 (and more recently on Gentoo, as documented at https://ces.mataroa.blog/blog/gentoo-olvwm-bye-ubuntu/ https://ces.mataroa.blog/blog/gentoo-olvwm-bye-ubuntu/). A survey of available olwvm implementations available on github at the time I created the repo is in the README of https://github.com/olvwm/xview/ https://github.com/olvwm/xview/ Currently this works on an ancient 32-bit laptop (running NixOS 22.05 as documented in https://ces.mataroa.blog/blog/distro_hoppingmd/ https://ces.mataroa.blog/blog/distro_hoppingmd/) as well.
        hualapais 1y ago
        I know this is a bit late, but I second the recommendation for an updated openlook and XView on Tribblix. In addition, ol/xv as a default desktop environment would be an strong differentiator for the distribution, IMHO. Along those same lines, Tribblix could more aggressively tout the historical justification for its SVR4 packaging, highlighting its retro-ness. And thank you so much for tribblix; I was about to give up on illumos after repeated trouble installing OpenIndiana on my laptop (Tribblix worked out of the box on the hardware). I’ve since picked up a copy of “Solaris Internals” and have spent some time appreciating Solaris. Kudos.
- ch_123 1y ago
  They have an overlay for both: http://www.tribblix.org/overlay-cde.html http://www.tribblix.org/overlay-cde.html http://www.tribblix.org/overlay-openlook.html http://www.tribblix.org/overlay-openlook.html
- ptribble 1y ago
  There are over 30 desktop options (including quite a few of the older window managers, which is a bit of a blast from the past). I do include CDE and Open Look (the window manager and toolkit, at least). In both cases the add-on tools that were present in Solaris (like the whole of the DeskSet suite) aren't available, because they were never released in source form.
jeffWrld 1y ago
[dead]
gr4vityWall 1y ago
The Illumos' family is an interesting one. I wish it was easier to get it installed on modern hardware. Any of my attempts with distros like OpenIndiana, Tribblix and OmniOS didn't go further than the boot menu. I wonder how far a compatibility layer for Linux drivers could go to help other UNIX kernels' usability. Maybe the Oxide folks know more of what would be involved in such an effort.
- JdeBP 1y ago
  That's the wrong solution to the problem, as it means learning a second kernel and all of its stuff and making compatibility shims, whilst still facing the real problem that is not software at all. The right solution is actually explained the headlined WWW site, where Peter Tribble points out (in the About page and in the Use guide) that the significant constraint is that xe does not own the actual physical hardware to develop against. It's the usual story with small projects: good donated hardware, and developer time (and workspace, and food, and water, and housing, and electricity supply (-:), needed.
  - gr4vityWall 1y ago
    I agree with you in principle, and I understand the existing constraint. But I don't see developer time scaling up without those operating systems reaching (again) critical mass, and then having upstream wanting to write drivers for even more operating systems. Which is fine per se. But I wish people could buy relatively new hardware (say, last 3 years) and be able to run FreeBSD or Illumos with most things working.
- ori_b 1y ago
  > I wonder how far a compatibility layer for Linux drivers could go to help other UNIX kernels' usability This isn't very interesting. It means you're constrained to the Linux design decisions, and you're wasting time debugging mismatches and poor design decisions.
  - msgodel 1y ago
    It also creates a licensing issue. Part of the reason Linux has so many drivers is because the GPL requires all of the kernel code be provided to users under the GPL as well. If you link to that in your OS/distribution now all of your code must be published in the same way.
rollcat 1y ago
I was just thinking this morning, to write a blog post with a small tour of niche-but-functional operating systems. Tribblix and Dragonfly BSD were at the top of my list. I've been also thinking Haiku, RISC OS, 9front, MINIX... They've all been around for decades, and usually fly under the radar.
shrubble 1y ago
I really like (and have used in production) the ability to run Solaris Zones (containers) and "LX zones" which are Linux containers side by side on the same hardware. Many installation problems show up in the handling of USB3 and related quirks; I have a lovely AMD 8350 system that I can't install from USB onto because of some XHCI problem. The USB stick will boot the kernel, but then the kernel can't properly handle the USB stick after it has booted and can't see the installation media. I suppose I should bite the bullet and burn a CD to boot from, which should fix it.
- ptribble 1y ago
  That shouldn't be a fundamental problem with current Tribblix - due to this sort of problem the installer got modified so that once the bootloader has pulled the ramdisk off the usb stick it doesn't need it again (although if it can't see it it won't be able to install any packages from it, falling back to dragging them across the network).
- doublerabbit 1y ago
  Why not use a PxE server? Mostly simple to setup.
0xCafeBabee 1y ago
Sometimes it feels like keeping old systems alive is harder than keeping an old car running.
Crontab 1y ago
One thing I am curious about is its version of ZFS. Would it be incompatible with OpenZFS from a Linux/FreeBSD system?
- unixhero 1y ago
  Zfs on linux is its own project with a lot of development to make it run well on Linux That answers the Linux part of your question
  - ndiddy 1y ago
    ZFS on Linux has effectively taken over as the standard version of ZFS. It got renamed to OpenZFS a few years ago after the FreeBSD project chose to start using it for their ZFS support rather than upstream illumos ZFS due to how much more active the ZoL project was than upstream.
- sugarpimpdorsey 1y ago
  Solaris was the reference implementation of ZFS. Are you wondering if you could migrate disk pools from BSD/Linux to Solaris ZFS?
  - yjftsjthsd-h 1y ago
    Illumos hasn't been Solaris for a long time. In particular, illumos uses pool version 5000 plus feature flags, while the proprietary version is still on version 28 or so without feature flags. OpenZFS is also much closer to the exact code in illumos, as far as I know there are some differences these days because they don't stay exactly in sync but they're close-ish.
- ndiddy 1y ago
  You would have to look at the feature flags that your pool uses and see whether they match the flags that illumos supports. OpenZFS's feature flags are a superset of illumos's, so you'd be able to use a pool created on illumos on Linux/FreeBSD if that's what you're asking. https://openzfs.github.io/openzfs-docs/Basic%20Concepts/Feature%20Flags.html https://openzfs.github.io/openzfs-docs/Basic%20Concepts/Feat...

95 points by bilegeek 1y ago

> lightweight window managers are preferred over heavy desktop environments, the primary desktop option is Xfce, and MATE and Enlightenment are also available, plus many others I would expected CDE as a first class citizen and maybe OpenLook. And it says that it it maily for 32bit SPARC and 32bit X86 and later that "Important: 32-bit hardware support now completely removed.".

cheaprentalyeti 1y ago
I've been looking for a linux distribution that has olwm available but have had little luck. The closest I can find is a theme for icewm.
- CTOSian 1y ago
  me as well, olvwm was last time in Debian Jessie, now only on NetBSD as package
  - pabs3 1y ago
    Looks like Debian removed olvwm/olwm because they were incompatible with 64-bit and unmaintained. https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/xview https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/xview https://tracker.debian.org/news/1000764/removed-32p14-282-from-unstable/ https://tracker.debian.org/news/1000764/removed-32p14-282-fr... https://bugs.debian.org/911787 https://bugs.debian.org/911787
    - ptribble 1y ago
      It's never going to be maintained... But there is a 64-bit port (which I ought to bring in to Tribblix) https://github.com/ggodd/xview-64bit https://github.com/ggodd/xview-64bit
      - romforth 1y ago
        Feel free to check out https://github.com/olvwm/xview/ https://github.com/olvwm/xview/ as well. I wanted to run olvwm on Linux (when it went out of support on Ubuntu 16.04) and I'd managed to get this running on Ubuntu 20.04 (and more recently on Gentoo, as documented at https://ces.mataroa.blog/blog/gentoo-olvwm-bye-ubuntu/ https://ces.mataroa.blog/blog/gentoo-olvwm-bye-ubuntu/). A survey of available olwvm implementations available on github at the time I created the repo is in the README of https://github.com/olvwm/xview/ https://github.com/olvwm/xview/ Currently this works on an ancient 32-bit laptop (running NixOS 22.05 as documented in https://ces.mataroa.blog/blog/distro_hoppingmd/ https://ces.mataroa.blog/blog/distro_hoppingmd/) as well.
      - hualapais 1y ago
        I know this is a bit late, but I second the recommendation for an updated openlook and XView on Tribblix. In addition, ol/xv as a default desktop environment would be an strong differentiator for the distribution, IMHO. Along those same lines, Tribblix could more aggressively tout the historical justification for its SVR4 packaging, highlighting its retro-ness. And thank you so much for tribblix; I was about to give up on illumos after repeated trouble installing OpenIndiana on my laptop (Tribblix worked out of the box on the hardware). I’ve since picked up a copy of “Solaris Internals” and have spent some time appreciating Solaris. Kudos.
ch_123 1y ago
They have an overlay for both: http://www.tribblix.org/overlay-cde.html http://www.tribblix.org/overlay-cde.html http://www.tribblix.org/overlay-openlook.html http://www.tribblix.org/overlay-openlook.html
ptribble 1y ago
There are over 30 desktop options (including quite a few of the older window managers, which is a bit of a blast from the past). I do include CDE and Open Look (the window manager and toolkit, at least). In both cases the add-on tools that were present in Solaris (like the whole of the DeskSet suite) aren't available, because they were never released in source form.

jeffWrld 1y ago

[dead]

gr4vityWall 1y ago

The Illumos' family is an interesting one. I wish it was easier to get it installed on modern hardware. Any of my attempts with distros like OpenIndiana, Tribblix and OmniOS didn't go further than the boot menu. I wonder how far a compatibility layer for Linux drivers could go to help other UNIX kernels' usability. Maybe the Oxide folks know more of what would be involved in such an effort.

JdeBP 1y ago
That's the wrong solution to the problem, as it means learning a second kernel and all of its stuff and making compatibility shims, whilst still facing the real problem that is not software at all. The right solution is actually explained the headlined WWW site, where Peter Tribble points out (in the About page and in the Use guide) that the significant constraint is that xe does not own the actual physical hardware to develop against. It's the usual story with small projects: good donated hardware, and developer time (and workspace, and food, and water, and housing, and electricity supply (-:), needed.
- gr4vityWall 1y ago
  I agree with you in principle, and I understand the existing constraint. But I don't see developer time scaling up without those operating systems reaching (again) critical mass, and then having upstream wanting to write drivers for even more operating systems. Which is fine per se. But I wish people could buy relatively new hardware (say, last 3 years) and be able to run FreeBSD or Illumos with most things working.
ori_b 1y ago
> I wonder how far a compatibility layer for Linux drivers could go to help other UNIX kernels' usability This isn't very interesting. It means you're constrained to the Linux design decisions, and you're wasting time debugging mismatches and poor design decisions.
- msgodel 1y ago
  It also creates a licensing issue. Part of the reason Linux has so many drivers is because the GPL requires all of the kernel code be provided to users under the GPL as well. If you link to that in your OS/distribution now all of your code must be published in the same way.

rollcat 1y ago

I was just thinking this morning, to write a blog post with a small tour of niche-but-functional operating systems. Tribblix and Dragonfly BSD were at the top of my list. I've been also thinking Haiku, RISC OS, 9front, MINIX... They've all been around for decades, and usually fly under the radar.

shrubble 1y ago

I really like (and have used in production) the ability to run Solaris Zones (containers) and "LX zones" which are Linux containers side by side on the same hardware. Many installation problems show up in the handling of USB3 and related quirks; I have a lovely AMD 8350 system that I can't install from USB onto because of some XHCI problem. The USB stick will boot the kernel, but then the kernel can't properly handle the USB stick after it has booted and can't see the installation media. I suppose I should bite the bullet and burn a CD to boot from, which should fix it.

ptribble 1y ago
That shouldn't be a fundamental problem with current Tribblix - due to this sort of problem the installer got modified so that once the bootloader has pulled the ramdisk off the usb stick it doesn't need it again (although if it can't see it it won't be able to install any packages from it, falling back to dragging them across the network).
doublerabbit 1y ago
Why not use a PxE server? Mostly simple to setup.

0xCafeBabee 1y ago

Sometimes it feels like keeping old systems alive is harder than keeping an old car running.

Crontab 1y ago

One thing I am curious about is its version of ZFS. Would it be incompatible with OpenZFS from a Linux/FreeBSD system?

unixhero 1y ago
Zfs on linux is its own project with a lot of development to make it run well on Linux That answers the Linux part of your question
- ndiddy 1y ago
  ZFS on Linux has effectively taken over as the standard version of ZFS. It got renamed to OpenZFS a few years ago after the FreeBSD project chose to start using it for their ZFS support rather than upstream illumos ZFS due to how much more active the ZoL project was than upstream.
sugarpimpdorsey 1y ago
Solaris was the reference implementation of ZFS. Are you wondering if you could migrate disk pools from BSD/Linux to Solaris ZFS?
- yjftsjthsd-h 1y ago
  Illumos hasn't been Solaris for a long time. In particular, illumos uses pool version 5000 plus feature flags, while the proprietary version is still on version 28 or so without feature flags. OpenZFS is also much closer to the exact code in illumos, as far as I know there are some differences these days because they don't stay exactly in sync but they're close-ish.
ndiddy 1y ago
You would have to look at the feature flags that your pool uses and see whether they match the flags that illumos supports. OpenZFS's feature flags are a superset of illumos's, so you'd be able to use a pool created on illumos on Linux/FreeBSD if that's what you're asking. https://openzfs.github.io/openzfs-docs/Basic%20Concepts/Feature%20Flags.html https://openzfs.github.io/openzfs-docs/Basic%20Concepts/Feat...