Don't forget a reasonable choice of editors. The usual 2 (I won't name names so we don't start the usual editor war) plus nano seems the minimum to me.
On Wed, 20 Aug 2025 at 09:22, Carl Brewer via openindiana-discuss < [email protected]> wrote: > > My background, in the 1980's and 1990's I was a UNIX and network > sysadmin, cut my teeth on SunOS 4.1, argued with Sun incessantly about > the evils of SVr4 and SunOS 5 (the first few years, were really, really > bad) > > Always compiled my own stuff from source. > > I have a question for the group. > > What actually belongs in an operating system? > > I see, or at least I think I see, a lot of effort on various platforms, > to maintain applications (gimp? really? bundled?!), and when humans are > scarce, is this at the expense of device drivers, installation systems > and so on? > > For a little while, I recall one of the *BSD ports systems being used on > some versions of SunOS 5.10+ (correct me if I'm wrong), which seemed a > good pathway to take, but now we seem to have this weird IPS thingo and > all the barriers to entry that it introduces. Every damn UNIX/clone > system has its own awful system for ports/packages/dependency mess > making and they *all* suck. > > Anyway, enough preamble ... > > An O/S (general purpose), must include : > > Compiler(s) and standard libraries for the common languages (C/C++ etc, > whatever GCC calls itself these days) so you can compile the system on > itself. > Scripting languages (sh, perl, python) > shells (sh, csh, tsch, bash etc) > A set of robust device drivers that 'just work' (this is 2025, you > shouldn't need to go futzing around to find the right driver for your > video card, it should *just work*) > A sane, sensible, simple install setup that works on modern hardware > without hacks. This, these days, means all the various BIOS stuff on PC > hardware shouldn't need weirdness to work. > Backup solution (borg? tar, zfs send etc) > A bombproof filesystem that supports auto up and downsizing etc (ZFS is > pretty close to perfect) and is cross-platform (hrm, it sorta is, but > then there's ZFS features, and they're not standard anymore, it *might* > work ... ) > Some sort of sensible firewall and tripwire'ish solution. Something > that makes FTP (ha!) "just work" etc. > System performance monitoring (top, ntop, nagios plugins, the standards > that we all use) > > I don't think there'd be too much dissent wrt that list. Where it gets > interesting is what then gets bundled in, and how? > > Should, for example, apache be bundled in? With the maintenance issues > that this brings with it? Should VLC? Should Firefox or some other > browser? If it's a desktop system, you'd want FF and Thunderbird or > similar, some reasonable version of TWM (golly, I am old!) but for a > server? I don't know where you draw the lines, but it does look like > "we" spend a lot of time farting around with applications that really, > aren't up to a niche community to support. I use VirtualBox on my O/I > servers, but should it be bundled, or something that we get with source > and compile ourselves? > > I dunno .. Just rambling on a Wednesday arvo ;) > > Carl > > > > _______________________________________________ > openindiana-discuss mailing list > [email protected] > https://openindiana.org/mailman/listinfo/openindiana-discuss > -- Pierfrancesco Caci, ik5pvx _______________________________________________ openindiana-discuss mailing list [email protected] https://openindiana.org/mailman/listinfo/openindiana-discuss
