Solaris

Dear Solaris forum
(this was -sort of- the best sub-forum I could find based on previous postings, feel free to move if it is considered inappropriate)

Background and Disclaimer:
I sincerely hope that this will not break rule #8 of the forum rules, because that is not my intent. My question is not a general anti-GNU/FSF kind rant or anything (I am myself a GNU/Linux user) but is based on a genuine curiosity and a love for the diversity inherent in open source. Despite this, it is grounded on the fear of an emerging monoculture of GNU, and due to this I find projects such as PCC as systems compiler for openBSD and the ClangBSD project being encouraging developments, and hopefully Linux will follow their lead. My concern started to grow after reading the blog post "GNU is killing Solaris". If it indeed is the case that GNU has become the defacto standard on all UNIX and unix-like operating systems, I see that as a problem. Just to underline my concerns, I started looking for Linux distributions with alternative tools (specifically if there were any that used Zsh rather than Bash as default shell since those two are about equally powerful and rather easy to change between) and I did not find any (except Gobo, but even there it was not part of the core distribution but rather added on top).

The actual question (and the Solaris connection):

Is anyone aware of an alternative distributions out there - like an "inverse Nexenta" where a BSD- or Solaris userland is added ontop of Linux - or is the general consensus that this would combine the "worst of two worlds"? If so, would that indicate that there is no place in this world for alternative userlands and total GNU domination is imminent? The googling that I have done found the Heirloom project, which apparently hosts old original opensourced Solaris userland utilities which can be run on Linux (I have no idea whether the current openSolaris userland utilities are equally portable), and some indications that engineers were working on making it possible to compile Linux with SunCC (any updates on opensourcing of sunCC?). I suspect that Linux suffers from a severe GNU lock-in which probably would make a hypothetical Solaris/Linux operating system difficult at best. Why not use the "real thing" (openSolaris) you might ask - which is a valid point. On the other hand does the linux kernel show one of the most rapid developments and most extensive hardware supports, which even someone wanting to use a non-GNU unix-like operating system might like. My basis for this question is however not focused entirely on the technical pros and cons, but rather to highlight and try to define why *BSD and Solaris userlands are being outcompeted and/or replaced by their GNU counterparts and to try to find out whether there are any alternative developments.

As @itsme pointed out on the last line of his blog comment:

As a long time solaris user/administrator, I feel am not disadvantaged in any way by using the default solaris user tool set, it just takes a different mindset and approach.

Arguably my path is paved with less bugs, security holes, incompatibility issues etc to fix along the way.

Thank you for your answer and I appreciate the view and agree that currently, arguing about which variant that is run is a futile effort (although very popular which probably is due to that many like to identify themselves by what they run on their computers for some strange reason) - but what about the future? If GNU-isms turn into defacto standards (as seems to be the case already for GCC, where competing compilers such as SunCC, ICC and LLVM/Clang need to aim for GCC-type C compatibility).

I am not sure whether bringing an alternative userland to Linux would help the situation in any way, but since it is a rapidly growing platform setting the "standard" for many OSS projects, I am afraid that it could become an issue that it is completely locked-in to GNU.

Each particular piece of software has its strengths and weaknesses, whether it comes from the Unix original tree, from the FSF or from elsewhere. Competition is good and has allowed Gnu/Linux, *BSDs and Solaris kernels and userlands to evolve and hopefully improve. Despite their different development models rules and priorities, they borrow and sometimes share a lot from each other so the border between them is more fuzzy than what I believe your question imply.

Back to it, the Heirloom project seems dormant and is probably doomed. I don't see a lot of interest in porting the legacy Bourne shell to Gnu/Linux while it is being obsoleted by OpenSolaris and replaced by something more standard compliant (likely ksh93 but even bash is a much better choice that /bin/sh). Similarly, the SVR4 packaging tools are being replaced by the new IPS ones so porting them to Linux would be a waste of energy IMHO.

If I need to run Solaris but my hardware doesn't support it (which is unlikely), I simply run it on top of VirtualBox running on some Linux distribution.

Why are you complaining about people identifying themselves with what they run (or drink, eat, speak, watch, whatever) after all ? That looks very human to me and fine as long as nobody tries to impose its views to others.

An off topic comment: SunCC has never been the name of the product which used to be "Sun WorkShop", "Forte Developer", "Sun One Studio", "Sun Studio" and is now "Oracle Solaris Studio". It was never open sourced.