SunOS is a

Unix Unix (; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multiuser computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, a ...

-branded

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ef ...

developed by

Sun Microsystems Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Sun for short) was an American technology company that sold computers, computer components, software, and information technology services and created the Java programming language, the Solaris operating system, ZFS, ...

for their

workstation A workstation is a special computer designed for technical or scientific applications. Intended primarily to be used by a single user, they are commonly connected to a local area network and run multi-user operating systems. The term ''worksta ...

and server

computer system A computer is a machine that can be programmed to carry out sequences of arithmetic or logical operations ( computation) automatically. Modern digital electronic computers can perform generic sets of operations known as programs. These prog ...

s. The ''SunOS'' name is usually only used to refer to versions 1.0 to 4.1.4, which were based on BSD, while versions 5.0 and later are based on UNIX System V Release 4, and are marketed under the

brand name A brand is a name, term, design, symbol or any other feature that distinguishes one seller's good or service from those of other sellers. Brands are used in business, marketing, and advertising for recognition and, importantly, to create a ...

'' Solaris''.

History

SunOS 1 only supported the Sun-2 series systems, including Sun-1 systems upgraded with Sun-2 ( 68010) CPU boards. SunOS 2 supported Sun-2 and Sun-3 ( 68020) series systems. SunOS 4 supported Sun-2 (until release 4.0.3), Sun-3 (until 4.1.1), Sun386i (4.0, 4.0.1 and 4.0.2 only) and Sun-4 (

SPARC SPARC (Scalable Processor Architecture) is a reduced instruction set computer (RISC) instruction set architecture originally developed by Sun Microsystems. Its design was strongly influenced by the experimental Berkeley RISC system developed ...

) architectures. Although SunOS 4 was intended to be the first release to fully support Sun's new SPARC processor, there was also a SunOS 3.2 release with preliminary support for Sun-4 systems. SunOS 4.1.2 introduced support for Sun's first

sun4m Sun-4 is a series of Unix workstations and servers produced by Sun Microsystems, launched in 1987. The original Sun-4 series were VMEbus-based systems similar to the earlier Sun-3 series, but employing microprocessors based on Sun's own SPARC V7 RIS ...

-architecture

multiprocessor Multiprocessing is the use of two or more central processing units (CPUs) within a single computer system. The term also refers to the ability of a system to support more than one processor or the ability to allocate tasks between them. There ar ...

machines (the SPARCserver 600MP series); since it had only a single lock for the kernel, only one

CPU A central processing unit (CPU), also called a central processor, main processor or just processor, is the electronic circuitry that executes instructions comprising a computer program. The CPU performs basic arithmetic, logic, controlling, and ...

at a time could execute in the kernel. The last release of SunOS 4 was 4.1.4 (Solaris 1.1.2) in 1994. The

sun4 Sun-4 is a series of Unix workstations and servers produced by Sun Microsystems, launched in 1987. The original Sun-4 series were VMEbus-based systems similar to the earlier Sun-3 series, but employing microprocessors based on Sun's own SPARC V7 RIS ...

, sun4c and

architectures were supported in 4.1.4;

sun4d Sun4d is a computer architecture introduced by Sun Microsystems in 1992. It is a development of the earlier Sun-4 architecture, using the XDBus system bus, SuperSPARC processors, and SBus I/O cards. The XDBus was the result of a collaboration bet ...

was not supported. Sun continued to ship SunOS 4.1.3 and 4.1.4 until December 27, 1998; they were supported until September 30, 2003.

"SunOS" and "Solaris"

In 1987,

AT&T Corporation AT&T Corporation, originally the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, is the subsidiary of AT&T Inc. that provides voice, video, data, and Internet telecommunications and professional services to businesses, consumers, and government agen ...

and Sun announced that they were collaborating on a project to merge the most popular Unix flavors on the market at that time: BSD (including many of the features then unique to SunOS),

System V Unix System V (pronounced: "System Five") is one of the first commercial versions of the Unix operating system. It was originally developed by AT&T and first released in 1983. Four major versions of System V were released, numbered 1, 2, 3, an ...

, and Xenix. This would become System V Release 4 (SVR4). On September 4, 1991, Sun announced that its next major OS release would switch from its BSD-derived source base to one based on SVR4. Although the internal designation of this release would be ''SunOS 5'', from this point Sun began using the marketing name '' Solaris''. The justification for this new "overbrand" was that it encompassed not only SunOS, but also the OpenWindows desktop environment and

Open Network Computing __NOTOC__ Open Network Computing (ONC) Remote Procedure Call (RPC), commonly known as Sun RPC is a remote procedure call system. ONC was originally developed by Sun Microsystems in the 1980s as part of their Network File System project. ONC is ba ...

(ONC) functionality. Even though the new SVR4-based OS was not expected to ship in volume until the following year, Sun immediately began using the new ''Solaris'' name to refer to the currently shipping SunOS 4 release (also including OpenWindows). Thus SunOS 4.1.1 was rebranded ''Solaris 1.0''; SunOS 5.0 would be considered a part of Solaris 2.0. SunOS 4.1.''x'' micro versions continued to be released through 1994, and each of these was also given a ''Solaris 1.''x equivalent name. In practice, these were often still referred to by customers and even Sun personnel by their SunOS release names. Matching the version numbers was not straightforward: Today, SunOS 5 is universally known as ''Solaris'', although the ''SunOS'' name is still visible within the OS itself in the startup banner, the output of the uname command, and man page footers, among other places. Matching a SunOS 5.x release to its corresponding Solaris marketing name is simple: each Solaris release name includes its corresponding SunOS 5 minor version number. For example, Solaris 2.4 incorporated SunOS 5.4. There is one small twist: after Solaris 2.6, the "2." was dropped from the Solaris name and the SunOS minor number appears by itself. The latest Solaris release is named ''Solaris 11'' and incorporates SunOS 5.11.

User interface

GUI environments bundled with earlier versions of SunOS included SunTools (later

SunView SunView (Sun Visual Integrated Environment for Workstations, originally SunTools) is a discontinued windowing system from Sun Microsystems developed in the early 1980s. It was included as part of SunOS, Sun's UNIX implementation; unlike later U ...

) and NeWS. In 1989, Sun released OpenWindows, an OPEN LOOK-compliant X11-based environment which also supported SunView and NeWS applications. This became the default SunOS GUI in SunOS 4.1.1.

References

External links

The Sun Hardware Reference (Overview)
*
''An Introduction to Solaris'' – a sample chapter from ''Solaris Internals: Core Kernel Architecture'' by Jim Mauro & Richard McDougall, Prentice-Hall, 2000. (PDF)

(last updated February 17, 2002)
Initial Solaris announcement
{{DEFAULTSORT:Sunos Berkeley Software Distribution Discontinued operating systems Sun Microsystems software UNIX System V

History

"SunOS" and "Solaris"

User interface

See also

References

External links