[jclulow]

> I just fear that by dropping SPARC, Illumos have put the final nail in their own coffin.

If that were true, most illumos users today would be SPARC users. There would be more than a couple of people working on SPARC support, and not merely as a part-time hobby. There would be software support for a SPARC machine that was sold some time after 2011.

Instead, something like 99% of the people running illumos are doing so on 64-bit x86 machines. Dropping SPARC support will allow us to move forward much more easily with enhancements to the dramatically more relevant x86 bits. If anything I expect it will allow us to do interesting things that would garner new interest, like using Rust to implement bits of the operating system.

[wicket]

Thanks for the reply. That surprises me but I'm glad to hear that x86 support is strong. It does lead me to wonder, what sort of things are people using Illumos for? Maybe it's time I checked it out. :)