The document provides a brief history of UNIX operating systems, beginning in 1969. It discusses early versions of UNIX through developments in the 1990s by Digital Equipment Corporation, SGI, Sun Microsystems, and others. It outlines the transition of Solaris to open source as OpenSolaris and later Illumos. The document concludes with information about OmniOS, an Illumos-based operating system developed by OmniTI with a small core and focus on layered packages and regular releases.

1. /
OmniOS
and a brief history of UNIX
Saturday, June 1, 13

2. History of UNIX? (no)
These are not operating systems.
These are distributions of Linux.
Linux isn’t (quite) UNIX.
Saturday, June 1, 13

3. History of UNIX? (no)
These are not operating systems.
These are distributions of Linux.
Linux isn’t (quite) UNIX.
1991
Saturday, June 1, 13

4. A brief (and incomplete) history of UNIX
derivative work: Joe le Kiffeur
Saturday, June 1, 13

5. 1969
A brief (and incomplete) history of UNIX
derivative work: Joe le Kiffeur
Saturday, June 1, 13

6. A brief (and incomplete) history of UNIX
derivative work: Joe le Kiffeur
Saturday, June 1, 13

7. A brief (and incomplete) history of UNIX
derivative work: Joe le Kiffeur
Saturday, June 1, 13

8. A brief history of UNIX (and Theo)
derivative work: Joe le Kiffeur
Saturday, June 1, 13

9. A brief history of UNIX (and Theo)
derivative work: Joe le Kiffeur
Digital UNIX
OSF/1
Tru64 5.0
Digital UNIX 4
Tru64 5.1B
Saturday, June 1, 13

10. A brief history of UNIX (and Theo)
derivative work: Joe le Kiffeur
Digital UNIX
OSF/1
Tru64 5.0
Digital UNIX 4
Tru64 5.1B
Undergrad
Commercial
Government
Graduate
Saturday, June 1, 13

11. A brief history of UNIX (and Theo)
derivative work: Joe le Kiffeur
Digital UNIX
OSF/1
Tru64 5.0
Digital UNIX 4
Tru64 5.1B
SGI Irix 1.0
SGI Irix 4.0
SGI Irix 5.3
SGI Irix
6.2 to 6.5.20
Undergrad
Commercial
Government
Graduate
Saturday, June 1, 13

12. A brief history of UNIX (and Theo)
derivative work: Joe le Kiffeur
Digital UNIX
OSF/1
Tru64 5.0
Digital UNIX 4
Tru64 5.1B
SGI Irix 1.0
SGI Irix 4.0
SGI Irix 5.3
SGI Irix
6.2 to 6.5.20
Undergrad
Commercial
Government
Graduate
Saturday, June 1, 13

13. A brief history of UNIX (and Theo)
derivative work: Joe le Kiffeur
Digital UNIX
OSF/1
Tru64 5.0
Digital UNIX 4
Tru64 5.1B
SGI Irix 1.0
SGI Irix 4.0
SGI Irix 5.3
SGI Irix
6.2 to 6.5.20
Undergrad
Commercial
Government
Graduate
Saturday, June 1, 13

14. A brief history of UNIX (and Theo)
derivative work: Joe le Kiffeur
Digital UNIX
OSF/1
Tru64 5.0
Digital UNIX 4
Tru64 5.1B
SGI Irix 1.0
SGI Irix 4.0
SGI Irix 5.3
SGI Irix
6.2 to 6.5.20
Undergrad
Commercial
Government
Graduate
Saturday, June 1, 13

15. A brief history of UNIX (and Theo)
derivative work: Joe le Kiffeur
Digital UNIX
OSF/1
Tru64 5.0
Digital UNIX 4
Tru64 5.1B
SGI Irix 1.0
SGI Irix 4.0
SGI Irix 5.3
SGI Irix
6.2 to 6.5.20
Undergrad
Commercial
Government
Graduate
Saturday, June 1, 13

16. A brief history of UNIX (and Theo)
derivative work: Joe le Kiffeur
Digital UNIX
OSF/1
Tru64 5.0
Digital UNIX 4
Tru64 5.1B
SGI Irix 1.0
SGI Irix 4.0
SGI Irix 5.3
SGI Irix
6.2 to 6.5.20
Undergrad
Commercial
Government
Graduate
Saturday, June 1, 13

17. A brief history of UNIX (and Theo)
derivative work: Joe le Kiffeur
Digital UNIX
OSF/1
Tru64 5.0
Digital UNIX 4
Tru64 5.1B
SGI Irix 1.0
SGI Irix 4.0
SGI Irix 5.3
SGI Irix
6.2 to 6.5.20
Undergrad
Commercial
Government
Graduate
?
Saturday, June 1, 13

18. This is where SunOS gets interesting.
4.0
4.1
4.1.4
1988
1994
1991
1.x
2.0-2.1
2.2
2.4
2.5
2.5.1
2.6
7
8
9
1992
1990 Solaris
1989
1993
1995
1996
1997
1998
1999
2000
2001
2002
x86 (real)
64bit
(SPARC)
kerberos/largefiles
x86
threads
POSIX.1c-1995 threads
multipath I/O, mdb, IPv6,
IPMP, IPsec, RBAC
Linux friendlier
Saturday, June 1, 13

19. The stage was set...
• 2005: Solaris 10... and OpenSolaris
• x86_64 support
• Trusted Extensions
• iSCSI
• Zones (Linux branded zones)
• Crossbow (network virtualization)
• ZFS, then boot, then root, then dedup
• Xen domU support
• fast reboot
Saturday, June 1, 13

20. Then the unthinkable happened.
• Sun decided that Solaris was a loss-leader
• To compete, go open (harder that it sounds)
• Started with DTrace & ended with OpenSolaris
Saturday, June 1, 13

21. Ended...
• It ended with OpenSolaris...
• Sun sold to Oracle and...
Kicked Butt,
Had Fun,
Didn’t Cheat,
Loved Our Customers,
Changed Computing Forever
- Scott McNealy
Saturday, June 1, 13

22. Interestingly...
Funny enough Oracle decided
to bother having a Solaris 11... good for them.
The rest of us were promised an open future...
and we got Illumos.
Saturday, June 1, 13

23. Illumos
We reject: kings, presidents and voting.
We believe in: rough consensus and running code.
- David D. Clark
Saturday, June 1, 13

24. Innovation...
• ZFS multi-vendor collaboration (feature flags in the ZFS SPA)
• ZFS + refration (to track compression)
• ZFS + estimated send/recv times
• ZFS I/O throttling across zones
• UNMAP on STMF (efficient ZFS-backed iSCSI LUNs)
• DTrace USDT provider reaping (huge win for Apache and Postgres)
• DTrace + CTF-aware print()
• TCP accept filters and initial congestion window API.
• KVM support
Saturday, June 1, 13

25. OmniTI stepped into the ring.
Saturday, June 1, 13

26. OmniOS
• IPS packaging system
• The core OS contains only the packages required to build the core OS.
• with a few exceptions: (zsh, screen, tmux, etc.)
• ZFS-based network installer: Kayak
• Rigorous 6 month release cycles w/ a 2 year long tail.
• Because core is tiny, we encourage a layered-cake approach
• internals are kept current.
• ideal for building appliances.
• Rule: keep your shit to yourself.
• Available on EC2.
Saturday, June 1, 13