Illumos (stylized as "illumos") is a partly

free and open-source Free and open-source software (FOSS) is software available under a Software license, license that grants users the right to use, modify, and distribute the software modified or not to everyone free of charge. FOSS is an inclusive umbrella term ...

Unix Unix (, ; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multi-user 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, a ...

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

. It has been developed since 2010 and is based on

OpenSolaris OpenSolaris () is a discontinued open-source computer operating system for SPARC and x86 based systems, created by Sun Microsystems and based on Solaris. Its development began in the mid 2000s and ended in 2010. OpenSolaris was developed as ...

, after the discontinuation of that product by

Oracle An oracle is a person or thing considered to provide insight, wise counsel or prophetic predictions, most notably including precognition of the future, inspired by deities. If done through occultic means, it is a form of divination. Descript ...

. It comprises a kernel,

device driver In the context of an operating system, 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, enabli ...

s, system

libraries A library is a collection of Book, books, and possibly other Document, materials and Media (communication), media, that is accessible for use by its members and members of allied institutions. Libraries provide physical (hard copies) or electron ...

, and

utility software Utility software is a program specifically designed to help manage and tune system or application software. It is used to support the computer infrastructure - in contrast to application software, which is aimed at directly performing tasks that b ...

for

system administration An IT administrator, system administrator, 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 administr ...

. Its core has become the base for many different open-sourced Illumos distributions, in a way similar to how the

Linux kernel The Linux kernel is a Free and open-source software, free and open source Unix-like kernel (operating system), kernel that is used in many computer systems worldwide. The kernel was created by Linus Torvalds in 1991 and was soon adopted as the k ...

is used in different

Linux distribution A Linux distribution, often abbreviated as distro, is an operating system that includes the Linux kernel for its kernel functionality. Although the name does not imply product distribution per se, a distro—if distributed on its own—is oft ...

Name

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 printi ...

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, character (computing), characters, or glyphs with shapes that appear identical or very similar but may have differing meaning. The designation is also applied to sequence ...

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

History and development

Illumos was announced via

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

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

with open implementations. OpenSolaris itself is based on System V Release 4 (SVR4) and the

Berkeley Software Distribution The Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD), also known as Berkeley Unix or BSD Unix, is a discontinued Unix operating system developed and distributed by the Computer Systems Research Group (CSRG) at the University of California, Berkeley, beginn ...

(BSD). The original plan explicitly stated that Illumos would not be a distribution or a fork. However, after

announced the discontinuation of OpenSolaris, plans were made to fork 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 a space set aside for creative work of any kind, including art, dance, music and theater. The word ''studio'' is derived from the , from , from ''studere'', meaning to study or zeal. Types Art The studio of any artist, esp ...

, to GCC. The "userland" software is now built with GNU make, and contains many GNU utilities such as GNU tar. At the time, Illumos had been lightly led by founder Garrett D'Amore and other community members/developers such as Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, via a Developers' Council. As of 2019 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 The Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD), also known as Berkeley Unix or BSD Unix, is a discontinued Unix operating system developed and distributed by the Computer Systems Research Group (CSRG) at the University of California, Berkeley, beginni ...

"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 ZFS (previously Zettabyte File System) is a file system with Volume manager, volume management capabilities. It began as part of the Sun Microsystems Solaris (operating system), Solaris operating system in 2001. Large parts of Solaris, includin ...

, a combined file system with integrated logical volume management, providing a high level of

data integrity Data integrity is the maintenance of, and the assurance of, data accuracy and consistency over its entire Information Lifecycle Management, life-cycle. It is a critical aspect to the design, implementation, and usage of any system that stores, proc ...

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 f ...

(or Zones), a low overhead implementation of

operating-system-level virtualization OS-level virtualization is an operating system (OS) virtualization paradigm in which the kernel allows the existence of multiple isolated user space instances, including containers ( LXC, Solaris Containers, AIX WPARs, HP-UX SRP 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 un ...

, 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 free and open-source virtualization module in the Linux kernel that allows the Kernel (operating system), kernel to function as a hypervisor. It was merged into the Mainline Linux, mainline Linux kernel i ...

(KVM), a virtualization infrastructure. KVM supports native virtualization on processors with hardware virtualization extensions. * OpenSolaris Network Virtualization and Resource Control (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.

Distributions

Distributions, at illumos.org * DilOS, with

Debian Debian () is a free and open-source software, free and open source Linux distribution, developed by the Debian Project, which was established by Ian Murdock in August 1993. Debian is one of the oldest operating systems based on the Linux kerne ...

package manager (

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

+ apt) and

virtualization In computing, virtualization (abbreviated v12n) is a series of technologies that allows dividing of physical computing resources into a series of virtual machines, operating systems, processes or containers. Virtualization began in the 1960s wit ...

support, available for

x86-64 x86-64 (also known as x64, x86_64, AMD64, and Intel 64) is a 64-bit extension of the x86 instruction set architecture, instruction set. It was announced in 1999 and first available in the AMD Opteron family in 2003. It introduces two new ope ...

and SPARC. *

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, NexentaSto ...

, distribution optimized for

storage area network A storage area network (SAN) or storage network is a computer network which provides access to consolidated, block device, block-level data storage. SANs are primarily used to access Computer data storage, data storage devices, such as disk ...

network-attached storage Network-attached storage (NAS) is a file-level computer data storage server connected to a computer network providing data access to a Heterogeneous computing, heterogeneous group of clients. In this context, the term "NAS" can refer to both th ...

, 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 Server (computing), servers in storage area networks (SAN) in ...

applications employing the

file system. * OmniOS Community Edition, takes a minimalist approach suitable for server use. * OpenIndiana, 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 bhyve and KVM virtualization. Its core kernel contributes to the illumos project. It features several technologies: ...

, a distribution for cloud computing with

integration. * Helios, a distribution powering the Oxide Computer Rack. * Tribblix, retro style distribution with modern components, available for

and SPARC. * v9os, a server-only, IPS-based minimal SPARC 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 i386, 80386 microprocessor in 1985. IA-32 is the first incarn ...

x86 platforms and SPARC.

Illumos Foundation

The Illumos Foundation was incorporated in the

State of California California () is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States that lies on the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. It borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, and shares Mexico–United States border, an ...

in 2012 as a 501(c)6 trade association, with founding board members Jason Hoffman (formerly at

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

), Evan Powell ( Nexenta), and Garrett D'Amore. As of 2024, its status in California is "dissolved".State of California Department of Justice, Office of the Attorney General
Registry of Charities and Fundraisers
Accessed December 17, 2024.

Notes

References

External links

*

a

web interface for Illumos-based NAS or SAN appliances. {{FOSS Free software programmed in C OpenSolaris Software forks Solaris software X86-64 operating systems de:OpenSolaris#illumos