HackerReposA FIELD GUIDE TO OPEN SOURCE
ProSponsor the shelf♧ 0
← Back to top all-time
illumos
illumos-gate
C2013–2025
illumos / illumos-gate

illumos-gate

An open-source Unix operating system -- this is a read-only mirror of the official repository at https://code.illumos.org/plugins/gitiles/illumos-gate

Systems & Infrastructure
Explore on GitHubRead Hacker News discussions
42Distinct people
49Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
1.9KGitHub stars
REPOSITORY AT A GLANCE

What to know before exploring

What it is

An open-source Unix operating system -- this is a read-only mirror of the official repository at https://code.illumos.org/plugins/gitiles/illumos-gate

GitHub

Where it is used

No documented product use was verified in the last source check.

What people are saying

No recommendation phrase was found in the indexed comments.

No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.

Also in these discussions

Mentioned in the same Hacker News threads. That is not proof they are substitutes.

This week on Hacker News

Nov 8–Nov 15 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/15/2026, 7:24:48 PM UTC.

No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.

Mentions over time

HN mentions by year49 dated mentions

Observed mentions: 2013-07-13 10:23:11 UTC to 2025-03-22 17:30:20 UTC.

024682013-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments20132014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 3 mentions; 0 submissions, 3 comments2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 3 mentions; 0 submissions, 3 comments2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 7 mentions; 0 submissions, 7 comments2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 7 mentions; 0 submissions, 7 comments2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 3 mentions; 0 submissions, 3 comments2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 1 submissions, 0 comments20192020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 6 mentions; 0 submissions, 6 comments2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 7 mentions; 0 submissions, 7 comments2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 8 mentions; 0 submissions, 8 comments2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 0 submissions, 2 comments2025

Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.

View mention counts and date ranges
UTC ranges include their start and exclude their end. Select a period to filter the source evidence.
PeriodStart (UTC)End (exclusive, UTC)MentionsSubmissionsComments
20132013-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101
20142014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC303
20152015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC303
20162016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC707
20172017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC707
20182018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC303
20192019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC110
20202020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20212021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC606
20222022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101
20232023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC707
20242024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC808
20252025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC202

From the project README

An excerpt from the repository, fetched Nov 13, 2026.

Read the project’s introduction
illumos-gate This is the core illumos source tree. Building The illumos build must be run on an illumos-based operating system. See the Building illumos section of our documentation for detailed instructions. Contributing Code changes must be reviewed and tested. If you'd like to submit a change for inclusion in the project, please see the Contributing to illumos guide in our documentation. Community The illumos community is small but active. We welcome everybody who would like to use the software and participate in the community -- whether you've decades of experience in systems software, or you're just getting started; whether you work for a company that uses illumos, or you just find it personally interesting. Our Community guide includes details about our Mailing Lists and IRC channels. Code of Conduct Participation in our community spaces, and in the project in general, are covered by our Code of Conduct. By participating in the project you agree to abide by its terms. License Most of the existing code is licensed under the CDDL and we expect new code will generally be under this license as well. Modifications of existing code may not alter the original license terms. Integrations of code from upstream sources that use another open source license are permissible, subject to approval of the advocates.
Read the full README on GitHub

What Hacker News says

7 sources
Annatar·Aug 24, 2016
And the fact is, when there's a piece of core that nobody uses, and has since been replaced by superior tooling, The Right Thing to do is to rip it out, ...The only way that could ever work without breaking existing software running in the wild would be for that superior tooling to be backwards compatible. SunOS (illumos) does this all of the time. For example, GNU options like -C have been added to SVR4 tar(1) on illumos, thereby enhancing, but not breaking existing functionality. Otherwise, how would you determine whether someone isn't using something, and that on every Solaris / illumos system on the planet? Have they optimized grep the way GNU did? I don't know about grep(1) in particular, we have fgrep(1) on illumos for that, which comes all the way from AT&T's SVR4. We also have egrep(1) in addition to grep(1). HP-UX for example, be
Read the rest
ing a SVR4 system, has fgrep(1) and egrep(1) in addition to grep(1) as well. I use fgrep(1) every day; only when I need to use regular expressions do I use grep(1). I know cat(1)'s been optimised. If you're curious enough, you can check out Solaris's grep(1) code here: https://github.com/illumos/illumos-gate/tree/master/usr/src/... Lupus in fabula: you can also see that the -H option has been added to grep(1), which illustrates my point that illumos does this all of the time[1]. I mean, it's not like Solaris still has ptrace or /dev/poll. ? % ls -l /dev/poll lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 29 Jul 24 2013 /dev/poll -> ../devices/pseudo/poll@0:poll % man ptrace Standard C Library Functions ptrace(3C) NAME ptrace - allows a parent process to control the execution of a child process SYNOPSIS #include <unistd.h> #include <sys/types.h> int ptrace(int request, pid_t pid, int addr, int data); ... ... ... % uname -srpmi SunOS 5.10 i86pc i386 i86pc ...so I'm baffled by your statement. Did you mean to write the opposite? What were you actually trying to say? [1] https://github.com/illumos/illumos-gate/commit/41599e9fdccb4...
In More, less, and a story of typical Unix fossilization
solarengineer·Jun 30, 2016
In an interview with BSDNow[0], Bryan Cantrill had mentioned how at Sun, they'd discussed with the person in charge of POSIX compliance, and got a clearance to specifically check for this case and prevent it. This code is present in Illumos [1]. (Edit: added links correctly) [0] http://www.bsdnow.tv/episodes/2015_11_23-the_cantrill_strike... [1] https://github.com/illumos/illumos-gate/blob/5a4ef21a18dfdc6...
In Rm -rf / in Windows Subsystem for Linux reveals sharp set of teeth

MAKE YOURSELF AT HOME

A few shortcuts

/
Search the collection
?
Open this guide
Esc
Close dialogs and navigation

Your saved repositories and interests stay in this browser.