Comments on: Question: The Difference between Sun OS and Solaris

By: Jeff Neuffer

Jeff Neuffer — Sun, 19 Feb 2006 09:31:00 +0000

To add to what nixcraft said above…

In the beginning, Sun Microsystems was based on BSD. It moved to what Rocky has stated above after it developed a relationship with AT&T.

-Jeff

By: nixcraft

nixcraft — Thu, 16 Feb 2006 23:40:00 +0000

Rocky,

SunOS were originally based on the AT&T SVR4.0 flavor of Unix, it is some sort of proprietary System V Release 4-based UNIX. SunOS Version 4.0 was the last one and now replaced by Solaris OS.

Between why don’t you download Solaris or Open Solaris DVD. VSNL has good pipe after all ;)

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Thu, 16 Feb 2006 23:08:00 +0000

Sun obfuscated this when they came out with Solaris.

SunOS = the OS
Solaris = SunOS + windowing + bundled stuff

Solaris 2.x == SunOS 5.x
SunOS 4.x retro named Solaris 1.x

uname will give the SunOS version which is what the man pages say.

Generally when people say SunOS, they mean the 4.x version based on BSD. When they say Solaris they mean the SysV based version.

Clear as mud ‘eh?