Illumos (stylized as illumos) is a partly

free and open-source Free and open-source software (FOSS) is a term used to refer to groups of software consisting of both free software and open-source software where anyone is freely licensed to use, copy, study, and change the software in any way, and the source ...

Unix Unix (; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multiuser computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, ...

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ef ...

. It is based on

OpenSolaris OpenSolaris () is a discontinued open-source computer operating system based on Solaris and created by Sun Microsystems. It was also, perhaps confusingly, the name of a project initiated by Sun to build a developer and user community around t ...

, which was based on

System V Release 4 Unix System V (pronounced: "System Five") is one of the first commercial versions of the Unix operating system. It was originally developed by AT&T and first released in 1983. Four major versions of System V were released, numbered 1, 2, 3, ...

(SVR4) and the

Berkeley Software Distribution The Berkeley Software Distribution or Berkeley Standard Distribution (BSD) is a discontinued operating system based on Research Unix, developed and distributed by the Computer Systems Research Group (CSRG) at the University of California, Be ...

(BSD). Illumos comprises a

kernel Kernel may refer to: Computing * Kernel (operating system), the central component of most operating systems * Kernel (image processing), a matrix used for image convolution * Compute kernel, in GPGPU programming * Kernel method, in machine learn ...

device driver In computing, a device driver is a computer program that operates or controls a particular type of device that is attached to a computer or automaton. A driver provides a software interface to hardware devices, enabling operating systems and o ...

s, system

libraries A library is a collection of Document, materials, books or media that are accessible for use and not just for display purposes. A library provides physical (hard copies) or electronic media, digital access (soft copies) materials, and may be a ...

, and

utility software Utility software is software designed to help analyze, configure, optimize or maintain a computer. It is used to support the computer infrastructure - in contrast to application software, which is aimed at directly performing tasks that benefit or ...

for

system administration A system administrator, or sysadmin, or admin is a person who is responsible for the upkeep, configuration, and reliable operation of computer systems, especially multi-user computers, such as servers. The system administrator seeks to en ...

. This core is now the base for many different open-sourced illumos distributions, in a similar way in which the

Linux kernel The Linux kernel is a free and open-source, monolithic, modular, multitasking, Unix-like operating system kernel. It was originally authored in 1991 by Linus Torvalds for his i386-based PC, and it was soon adopted as the kernel for the GNU ...

is used in different

Linux distribution A Linux distribution (often abbreviated as distro) is an operating system made from a software collection that includes the Linux kernel and, often, a package management system. Linux users usually obtain their operating system by downloading one ...

s. The maintainers write ''illumos'' in lowercase since some

computer font A computer font is implemented as a digital data file containing a set of graphically related glyphs. A computer font is designed and created using a font editor. A computer font specifically designed for the computer screen, and not for print ...

s do not clearly distinguish a lowercase ''L'' from an uppercase ''i'': ''Il'' (see

homoglyph In orthography and typography, a homoglyph is one of two or more graphemes, characters, or glyphs with shapes that appear identical or very similar. The designation is also applied to sequences of characters sharing these properties. Synoglyph ...

). The project name is a combination of words ''illuminare'' from Latin for ''to light'' and ''OS'' for ''Operating System''.

Overview

Illumos was announced via

webinar Web conferencing is used as an umbrella term for various types of online conferencing and collaborative services including webinars (web seminars), webcasts, and web meetings. Sometimes it may be used also in the more narrow sense of the peer-l ...

on Thursday, 3 August 2010, as a community effort of some core Solaris engineers to create a truly open source Solaris by swapping closed source bits of

with open implementations. The original plan explicitly stated that illumos would not be a distribution or a fork. However, after

Oracle An oracle is a person or agency considered to provide wise and insightful counsel or prophetic predictions, most notably including precognition of the future, inspired by deities. As such, it is a form of divination. Description The word ...

announced discontinuing OpenSolaris, plans were made to

fork In cutlery or kitchenware, a fork (from la, furca 'pitchfork') is a utensil, now usually made of metal, whose long handle terminates in a head that branches into several narrow and often slightly curved tine (structural), tines with which one ...

the final version of the Solaris ON kernel allowing illumos to evolve into a kernel of its own. , efforts focused on libc, the NFS lock manager, the crypto module, and many device drivers to create a Solaris-like OS with no closed, proprietary code. , development emphasis includes transitioning from the historical compiler,

Studio A studio is an artist or worker's workroom. This can be for the purpose of acting, architecture, painting, pottery (ceramics), sculpture, origami, woodworking, scrapbooking, photography, graphic design, filmmaking, animation, industrial design ...

, to GCC. The "userland" software is now built with

GNU make In software development, Make is a build automation tool that automatically builds executable programs and libraries from source code by reading files called ''Makefiles'' which specify how to derive the target program. Though integrated d ...

and contains many GNU utilities such as GNU tar. Illumos is lightly led by founder Garrett D'Amore and other community members/developers such as

Bryan Cantrill Bryan M. Cantrill (born 1973) is an American software engineer who worked at Sun Microsystems and later at Oracle Corporation following its acquisition of Sun. He left Oracle on July 25, 2010 to become the Vice President of Engineering at Joyent, ...

and Adam Leventhal, via a Developers' Council. The Illumos Foundation has been incorporated in the

State of California California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the ...

as a 501(c)6 trade association, with founding board members Jason Hoffman (formerly at

Joyent Joyent Inc. was a software and services company based in San Francisco, California. Specializing in cloud computing, it marketed infrastructure-as-a-service. On June 15, 2016, the company was acquired by Samsung Electronics. Services Triton, Joye ...

), Evan Powell (

Nexenta Nexenta by DDN, Inc., is a subsidiary of DataDirect Networks that markets computer software for data storage and backup, headquartered in San Jose, California. Nexenta develops the products NexentaStor, NexentaCloud, NexentaFusion, and NexentaEd ...

), and Garrett D'Amore. As of August 2012, the foundation was in the process of formalizing its by-laws and organizational development. At OpenStorage Summit 2010, the new logo for illumos was revealed, with official type and branding to follow over.

Development

Its primary development project, illumos-gate, derives from OS/Net (aka ON), which is a Solaris kernel with the bulk of the drivers, core libraries, and basic utilities, similar to what is delivered by a BSD "src" tree. It was originally dependent on

OS/Net, but a fork was made after

silently decided to close the development of Solaris and unofficially killed the OpenSolaris project.

Features

* ZFS, a combined file system and logical volume manager providing a high level of data integrity for very large storage capacities. *

Solaris Containers Solaris Containers (including Solaris Zones) is an implementation of operating system-level virtualization technology for x86 and SPARC systems, first released publicly in February 2004 in build 51 beta of Solaris 10, and subsequently in the fi ...

(or Zones), a low overhead implementation of

operating-system-level virtualization OS-level virtualization is an operating system (OS) paradigm in which the kernel allows the existence of multiple isolated user space instances, called ''containers'' (LXC, Solaris containers, Docker, Podman), ''zones'' (Solaris containers), '' ...

technology for x86 and SPARC systems. *

DTrace DTrace is a comprehensive dynamic tracing framework originally created by Sun Microsystems for troubleshooting kernel and application problems on production systems in real time. Originally developed for Solaris, it has since been released und ...

, a comprehensive dynamic tracing framework for troubleshooting kernel and application problems on production systems in real time. *

Kernel-based Virtual Machine Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) is a virtualization module in the Linux kernel that allows the kernel to function as a hypervisor. It was merged into the mainline Linux kernel in version 2.6.20, which was released on February 5, 2007. KV ...

(KVM), a virtualization infrastructure. KVM supports native virtualization on processors with hardware virtualization extensions. *

OpenSolaris Network Virtualization and Resource Control Solaris network virtualization and resource control is a set of features originally developed by Sun Microsystems as the OpenSolaris Crossbow umbrella project, providing an internal network virtualization and quality of service framework within t ...

(or Crossbow), a set of features that provides an internal network virtualization and quality of service including: virtual NIC (VNIC) pseudo-network interface technology, exclusive ip zones, bandwidth management, and flow control on a per interface and per VNIC basis.

Current distributions

Distributions, at illumos.org * DilOS, with

Debian Debian (), also known as Debian GNU/Linux, is a Linux distribution composed of free and open-source software, developed by the community-supported Debian Project, which was established by Ian Murdock on August 16, 1993. The first version of De ...

package manager (

dpkg dpkg is the software at the base of the package management system in the free operating system Debian and its numerous derivatives. dpkg is used to install, remove, and provide information about .deb packages. dpkg (Debian Package) itself is a ...

+ apt) and

virtualization In computing, virtualization or virtualisation (sometimes abbreviated v12n, a numeronym) is the act of creating a virtual (rather than actual) version of something at the same abstraction level, including virtual computer hardware platforms, stor ...

support, available for

x86-64 x86-64 (also known as x64, x86_64, AMD64, and Intel 64) is a 64-bit version of the x86 instruction set, first released in 1999. It introduced two new modes of operation, 64-bit mode and compatibility mode, along with a new 4-level paging ...

and

SPARC SPARC (Scalable Processor Architecture) is a reduced instruction set computer (RISC) instruction set architecture originally developed by Sun Microsystems. Its design was strongly influenced by the experimental Berkeley RISC system develope ...

. *

NexentaStor NexentaStor is an OpenSolaris or more recently Illumos distribution optimized for virtualization, storage area networks, network-attached storage, and iSCSI or Fibre Channel applications employing the ZFS file system. Like OpenSolaris, NexentaSt ...

, distribution optimized for

storage area network A storage area network (SAN) or storage network is a computer network which provides access to consolidated, block-level data storage. SANs are primarily used to access data storage devices, such as disk arrays and tape libraries from ser ...

network-attached storage Network-attached storage (NAS) is a file-level (as opposed to block-level storage) computer data storage server connected to a computer network providing data access to a heterogeneous group of clients. The term "NAS" can refer to both the tech ...

, and

iSCSI Internet Small Computer Systems Interface or iSCSI ( ) is an Internet Protocol-based storage networking standard for linking data storage facilities. iSCSI provides block-level access to storage devices by carrying SCSI commands over a TCP/IP ...

Fibre Channel Fibre Channel (FC) is a high-speed data transfer protocol providing in-order, lossless delivery of raw block data. Fibre Channel is primarily used to connect computer data storage to servers in storage area networks (SAN) in commercial data cen ...

applications employing the ZFS

file system In computing, file system or filesystem (often abbreviated to fs) is a method and data structure that the operating system uses to control how data is stored and retrieved. Without a file system, data placed in a storage medium would be one larg ...

. * OmniOS Community Edition, takes a minimalist approach suitable for server use. *

OpenIndiana OpenIndiana is a free and open-source Illumos#Current_distributions, illumos distribution Unix-derived UNIX_System_V, System V SVR4 operating system, started as OpenSolaris continuation project. fork (software development), Forked from OpenSolar ...

, a distribution that is a continuation and fork in the spirit of the

operating system. *

SmartOS SmartOS is a free and open-source SVR4 hypervisor based on the UNIX operating system that combines OpenSolaris technology with Linux's KVM virtualization. Its core kernel contributed to the illumos project. It features several technologies: C ...

, a distribution for cloud computing with

integration. * Tribblix, retro style distribution with modern components, available for

and

. * v9os, a server-only, IPS-based minimal

distribution. * XStreamOS, a distribution for infrastructure, cloud, and web development. Discontinued: * Dyson, derived from

using libc, and SMF init system. * OpenSXCE, distribution for developers and system administrators for

IA-32 IA-32 (short for "Intel Architecture, 32-bit", commonly called i386) is the 32-bit version of the x86 instruction set architecture, designed by Intel and first implemented in the 80386 microprocessor in 1985. IA-32 is the first incarnatio ...

x86 platforms and

References

External links