About Dyson

Dyson is a general-purpose operating system, a Debian derivative using the illumos kernel, libc, and SMF init system.

It is not a successor of any existing or existed distributions based on illumos or OpenSolaris. Dyson is constructed from scratch to be like Debian as much as possible. Namely, most of Debian packages can be built on Dyson without any changes, and arch-independed packages (arch all in Debian terms) can be installed directly as is.

Project goals:
  1. Self-hosted general-purpose operating system (for desktops and servers)
  2. Port GNU libc [1] [2]
  3. Official Debian port
  4. Hijack illumos mainstream.

Get Dyson

Currently Dyson is at the beginning of its development. It runs only on x86_64 processors. There is a LiveCD ISO image with a simple installer and a virtual drive image for VirtualBox.

Use login "root" with password "root" for VirtualBox image.

For downloading and using Dyson consider using the mirrors.

VCS repositories are available for anonymous read-only access:

  1. http://cgit.osdyson.org - almost all development happens here. URLs for cloning are specified on summary page of each repository.
  2. http://bzr.osdyson.org - bazaar repositories. Use "bzr branch http://bzr.osdyson.org/<REPO>" or "bzr branch bzr://osdyson.org/<REPO>" to clone.
  3. http://hg.osdyson.org - currently only mirroring some interesting bits from Solaris and OpenIndiana. Use the URL from address bar for cloning.

Mailing lists

http://lists.osdyson.org/listinfo/dyson-devel - development of Dyson, technical topics, packaging, porting Debian packages, porting software to illumos.

IRC channel

Dyson's IRC channel - #osdyson at irc.freenode.net.

Get involved

Report issues. Feel free to use IRC channel or email to .

Port Debian packages and various software to Dyson. Send patches to upstream and/or Debian package maintainers. Note that projects listed here - http://osdyson.org/projects - are projects that require more work than just a line in debian/changelog. Ideally any Debian package should need no more than a simple rebuild. See Porting guide.

See http://osdyson.org/issues to find out if you can help with an advise or coding.

Things to be done:

  • Get X stack, X server should work;
  • get Java stack;
  • get zones;
  • package Kernel Virtual Machine (kvm) and Qemu;
  • get audio stack (OpenSoundSystem);
  • get usb stack (port libusbx or openusb);
  • get more services (PostgreSQL, Apache) with full support for SMF, including restart on upgrade;
  • get GNU-toolchain-friendly dtrace;
  • switch to GRUB2 and be more friendly (= co-installable) with other systems;
  • port Glibc;
  • port Debian Installer.

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