OpenIndiana Hardware Compatibility

nortonham

thanks for doing this. Looks like wifi isn't so great.......

majekla

Until now, I never found any device compatible with wifi nor USB/ethernet dongle. But, you can use a Vonets wifi bridge (the Vonets catches the wifi and sends it to ethernet cable connected to your computer).

JuvenalUrbino

majekla Until now, I never found any device compatible with wifi nor USB/ethernet dongle

Due to the very limited number of contributors and the difficulty cater to a wider slice of audience in the desktop market (thus to possibly monetize the effort) desktop support on illumos is almost stuck to Sun's days (pre-2010) and reflects the demise of UNIX workstations.
Intel accelerated graphics are now supported up to Haswell; Nvidia also keeps releasing drivers for SunOS (recommended). A supported high-speed Ethernet NIC on a tower desktop is probably what most new user should be seeking out when approaching to Solaris desktop these days. Otherwise, greatest hope with wifi should be put in with either iwn(4d) or ath(4d) drivers. Mind, these are only going to work with very old models.
I had the privilege to own a couple of laptops with supported wireless in the past and it was great to travel around with an illumos-based computer as daily driver.

Solaris and illumos didn't diverge that much desktop-wise throughout the years, so it's worth also checking out the Solaris Hardware Compatibility List.

Tagging @Assassink because they may be interested in this thread.

majekla

JuvenalUrbino
Thank you very much for your answer.
You're right. I already know this situation, thanks to Toasterson who took the time to explain it to me when I started working with OI.
I actually tried a few USB/WIFI adapters from 2010-2015, it did not work.. But I will try others soon !

If I showcase desktop compatibility hardware, it is because I personally think that an OS as no future if desktop availability disappears (even if it is server oriented usage), moreover when the learning curve between popular OS and the new one is enormous.
I will post others howto for OpenIndiana, for basic things (I already posted a basic ZFS howto yesterday). If something is not perfect, I hope that UnitedBSD will notice it and help me improve. I have a lot of howtos for OpenIndiana.

OI offers a reasonable desktop solution (obviously, a lot of things are missing).
But anyway, nowadays, if you have a good browser (firefox) up to date, a good mail client (thunderbird), a good office suite (libreoffice), and virtualization ability (bhyve, virtualbox), then it's not the end !
I wish for this operating system to be able to take flight as it offers entirely credible functionalities today (at least for server use); I started on FreeBSD (I'm still on FreeBSD), but I really appreciate OI.

joany

Thank you for posting this!

nortonham

So do you use Open Indiana as your daily driver currently?

majekla

Yes.
I have it on my Dell Precision 7720 laptop.
It works very well (but no wifi and no webcam).
To me, webcams are the biggest lack for users.
I must use another laptop for conferences (with FreeBSD)

Some icons are missing for packages, some links (to the Trash for example) are broken in Mate, but that's not a big problem. You can easily fix them.

I also have it installed on a big server for virtualization.
I wrote a bhyve manager with ZFS snapshots possibility and use it for my students' VM labs every day.
I also wrote ZFS and Storj backup scripts (rclone).
In fact, I wrote hundreds of procedures for web servers, mariadb, ITSM installations... (for OpenIndiana)
It's a very good OS.
Maybe a bit heavy, but stable.
To me, the way Sun thought administration tasks is far better than on any other Unix. And I work everyday on debian, centos and off course FreeBSD.

nortonham

majekla

yeah no wifi is a big one for me

the bhyve manager sounds interesting.

you should post your guides here, or host your own site with howto's/guides

As a casual user some of the documentation for illumos os's isn't great imo

majekla

Ok.
I started to translate it in english (I'm french) a few days ago.
You can manage VMs entirely with dialog boxes with it.
Create, Duplicate, Replicate entire labs preserving network entanglement between the VMs, change VNC display, manipulate vnics, etherstubs, import, export, change resources (RAM, vCPU) etc.. create ZFS snapshots and restore etc...

It will take me a few days to finish translating then I'll be back and show it.

I started it as hobby a few weeks ago, just for fun.. but anyway, I use it in production now... And despite the fact that it's just a script, it's rather stable lol.

JuvenalUrbino

Came across this by chance:
https://illumos.org/hcl/