Stefano MarinelliAug 18, 2025

My friends, I'm so excited and happy to introduce a new project: the illumos Cafe!

The positive and constructive spirit of the BSD Cafe, created and maintained by all the friends who participated from day one in building a strong and friendly community, deserves to spread to other operating systems. Because there are other OSes that deserve attention, certainly more than they're getting right now.

Operating systems based on illumos (like SmartOS, OmniOS, Tribblix, OpenIndiana, etc.) are mature, stable, secure, and perfectly usable for a wide range of tasks. ZFS is native, zones are an excellent method for containerization, and bhyve and kvm coexist beautifully - and so much more, too much to list in a single post.

So from today, the illumos Cafe will stand alongside the BSD Cafe in creating a positive, respectful, and growth-oriented (but also relaxing!) environment, starting right here in the Fediverse with a Mastodon instance and a snac one.

I've written an introductory article about the project, including some technical details. I invite everyone interested to read it: https://it-notes.dragas.net/2025/08/18/introducing-the-illumos-cafe/

Choose your table, take a seat and enjoy your time at the illumos Cafe!

#SysAdmin #IT #BSDCafe #illumosCafe #Community #OpenSource #OSS #illumos #SmartOS #OpenIndiana #ZFS #bhyve #kvm #Fediverse #Mastodon #snac #ITNotes

Introducing the illumos Cafe: Another Cozy Corner for OS Diversity

Introducing illumos Cafe: a community-run hub on illumos, inspired by BSD Cafe. Fediverse-ready (Mastodon, snac). Built for OS diversity, transparency, and positivity.

IT Notes
Show threadPete OrrallAug 18, 2025

@stefano Awesome news! Admittedly I don't know much about the Illumos family of OSes other than being a modern derivative of (Open)Solaris and SVR4 Unix.

I don't even know where these OSes are being used. But, if there is an instance being created for it, then that's great. There's a growing community.

Would love to learn more.

Show threadstratacast
@peteorrall @stefano I'm nobody in particular, but I've been using SmartOS for the last year and have been in love with it. Also have OmniOS running in a couple places too. They are no fuss and are pleasant to use and do their jobs very well. My one regret with SmartOS is I might be a better candidate for their superset project: Triton Datacenter. But I am still pleased at this point with my choice
Aug 18, 2025 at 4:23pmWeb
Show threadPete OrrallAug 18, 2025
@stratacast @stefano Thanks for sharing. I've only had some brief experiences with OpenIndiana, first when it was initially released and then revisiting it a couple months ago. Definitely curious about SmartOS and OmniOS.
Show threadstratacastAug 18, 2025
@peteorrall @stefano I think you'd like them. OmniOS has been great to use. It feels "general purpose" like most other Unix-like OSes out there. SmartOS is a hypervisor first, so it has a lot of very different design choices. It makes it a great choice if you want to throw together a fast hypervisor system. One long story short, I reinstalled SmartOS in 15 minutes and immediately had people provisioning servers on it once the box was running. I was struck by the "live demo" curse. I should write a blog piece on that before I forget the events
Show threadPete OrrallAug 19, 2025
@stratacast @stefano I'm on the OmniOS site now. Downloading the ISO now. Rather colorful language for their releases, ie stable vs bloody. 😂
Show threadstratacastAug 19, 2025
@peteorrall @stefano I've only started riding OmniOS's stable branch these last few months. I don't know how bloody their branch is, but if it is anything like SmartOS's release stability (which is rolling), and package management via pkgsrc, it is could be rock solid