Illumos
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| Developer | illumos Foundation |
|---|---|
| Written in | C |
| OS family | Unix (System V Release 4) |
| Working state | Current |
| Source model | Open source with closed source binary blobs, targeted fully open source |
| Initial release | 2010 |
| Available in | English |
| Platforms | IA-32, x86-64, SPARC, ARM (under development) |
| Kernel type | Monolithic |
| License | BSD, MIT or CDDL |
| Official website | www |
illumos is a free and open-source Unix operating system. It derives from OpenSolaris, which in turn derives from SVR4 UNIX and Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD). illumos comprises a kernel, device drivers, system libraries, and utility software for system administration. This core is now the base for many different open-sourced OpenSolaris distributions, in a similar way in which the Linux kernel is used in different Linux distributions.
The maintainers write illumos in lowercase since some computer fonts do not clearly distinguish a lowercase L from an uppercase i (see homoglyph). The name is derived from the Latin illuminare meaning "to enlighten," and "OS" for 'operating system'.
illumos was announced via webinar 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 OpenSolaris with open implementations.
The original plan explicitly stated that illumos would not be a distribution or a fork. However, after Oracle announced discontinuing OpenSolaris, plans were made to fork the final version of the Solaris ON kernel allowing illumos to evolve into a kernel of its own.
As of 2010[update], 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. As of 2012[update], development emphasis includes transitioning from the historical compiler, Studio, to GCC.
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