SunOS -- was: Evans & Sutherland Y2K scrapyard heads-up - test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

22 Dec 1998

In a message dated 12/22/98 9:33:55 AM Pacific Standard Time,
dhansen(a)zebra.net writes:

...
  SunOS and Solaris were seperate creatures up until
about Solaris 2.4 and 
  SunOS 5.4 when they began merging the two into one entity.
  As for the numbering scheme that is definitely weird. It's advertised as
  Solaris 7, yet in the code it comes up as 2.7. Guess their marketing dept. 
  had an afterthought about it.

I don't know where you are getting this.  Solaris is an "environment". 
Always
has
been.  It includes SunOS, Openwindows, and tools.  Real developement ended on
SunOS 4 about 7 years ago, 4.1.4 being the last released version about 3-4
years
ago.  Also called Solaris 1.1.2.  Yes, the Solaris moniker was retrofitted to
the 
SunOS 4 stuff.

SunOS 5, also called Solaris 2, is running rampant as we speak.  the Solaris
7 thing, well, we figured that was just to get a bigger number than NT 5.
course,
now its windows 2000.  Solaris 7, aka 5.7, aka 2.7, still returns 5.7 in the
uname
commands to ensure compatibility with scripts, etc.

This is even on topic, sort of.  The Sun announcement of what would become
Solaris was in 1987.

Kelly