While I was using OpenSolaris (and Solaris before, till 9 6/06) as a personal desktop from SXDE->SXCE->OpenIndiana, I have tried many fork (Belenix, Damm small solaris, Nexenta, OI) I have to say that IllumOS is essentially dead as Irix was before and no one have enough manpower and FOSS culture to bring it back to life.
OpenSolaris nicest features like zfs (with IPS/BE, zones, branz on top), crossbow, SMF, FMA etc may remain or recreated for some time but the whole OS unfortunately is dead.
Irix legacy leave us with OpenGL, even if today nearly nobody know their origin, xfs even if is now EOL fs, STL, even if C++ now is well... Harmful. Many other good things including probably the best CDE out there but it does not exists anymore and it's hw with it. OpenSolaris will probably do the same.
I think people coming from traditional unix companies do not understand the hard lesson they get from Microsoft and GNU/Linux: today's student's, young aspiring users are tomorrow technicians. It doesn't matter how good your software is, if it's not good on their desktop will be marginal, the same for good big iron architectures. OpenSolaris itself start to be known thanks to Ian Murdock (Debian founder, hired by SUN, dead in unclear situation few years ago), not before OpenIndiana, simply because of the lacking of FOSS culture SUN has, even if OpenIndiana does not introduce, at least at start, any particular feature.
I still miss osol, I still hope for a real alternative to GNU/Linux, only to Linux to be more precise, I still hope to see a good architecture at a price and assembly that can be used as alternative to x86 on the desktop (I hope for OpenPower now) but nothing came to the horizon...
After SUN death I've tried to came back to FreeBSD: essentially a pain to use on modern desktop hw, even if I pry for many FreeBSD features from jails to geli passing through securelevel, freebsd-update, a base system consistent with the kernel, a damn simple init (despite raw compared to modern init's), good fw/network performance, rock solid stability, ... but still does not work well on commodity hw. I dream DragonflyBSD hammer storage but I can't really run Dragonfly as my desktop...
In the end I hope we as FOSS users, can came to a modern OS on free hardware and I fear our next desktop will be a kind of mobile-crap with lock-in builtin to the point of actual mobile crap. We need such free solution not only for IT but even for democracy.
OpenSolaris nicest features like zfs (with IPS/BE, zones, branz on top), crossbow, SMF, FMA etc may remain or recreated for some time but the whole OS unfortunately is dead.
Irix legacy leave us with OpenGL, even if today nearly nobody know their origin, xfs even if is now EOL fs, STL, even if C++ now is well... Harmful. Many other good things including probably the best CDE out there but it does not exists anymore and it's hw with it. OpenSolaris will probably do the same.
I think people coming from traditional unix companies do not understand the hard lesson they get from Microsoft and GNU/Linux: today's student's, young aspiring users are tomorrow technicians. It doesn't matter how good your software is, if it's not good on their desktop will be marginal, the same for good big iron architectures. OpenSolaris itself start to be known thanks to Ian Murdock (Debian founder, hired by SUN, dead in unclear situation few years ago), not before OpenIndiana, simply because of the lacking of FOSS culture SUN has, even if OpenIndiana does not introduce, at least at start, any particular feature.
I still miss osol, I still hope for a real alternative to GNU/Linux, only to Linux to be more precise, I still hope to see a good architecture at a price and assembly that can be used as alternative to x86 on the desktop (I hope for OpenPower now) but nothing came to the horizon...
After SUN death I've tried to came back to FreeBSD: essentially a pain to use on modern desktop hw, even if I pry for many FreeBSD features from jails to geli passing through securelevel, freebsd-update, a base system consistent with the kernel, a damn simple init (despite raw compared to modern init's), good fw/network performance, rock solid stability, ... but still does not work well on commodity hw. I dream DragonflyBSD hammer storage but I can't really run Dragonfly as my desktop...
In the end I hope we as FOSS users, can came to a modern OS on free hardware and I fear our next desktop will be a kind of mobile-crap with lock-in builtin to the point of actual mobile crap. We need such free solution not only for IT but even for democracy.