Difference Between Sun, Sun Os & Solaris

rajaniyer123 · 03-04-2006, 11:06 PM

I would like to know what is the exact differece between 1. SUN
2. SUN OS
3. SOLARIS

terminologies.

jlliagre · 03-05-2006, 01:52 AM

1: Sun is a hardware and software company (Like IBM, HP, Apple, ...)
2: SunOS is kernel (Like Linux is)
3: Solaris is an Operating System based on SunOS (Like Gnu/Linux, Red-Hat, Debian, ...), OpenSolaris is the Open Source version of Solaris.

routers · 03-05-2006, 01:59 AM

u need sun os to install solaris , mean sun os ( state there o/s "operating system")

solaris cannot run w/o sun os

let someone blast me later

mmhansen · 03-05-2006, 07:34 PM

Sun's operating system naming schemes are confusing and somewhat inconsistent. I tried to post a long, detailed explanation, but that post was lost due to an annoying design flaw in the forum.

Basically, there is only one important distinction: when someone who worked with Suns before the early 1990s mentions SunOS, they probably mean the old BSD-based OS which ended with SunOS version 4.1.4. Unfortunately, Sun sort of renamed SunOS 4.1.3 and 4.1.4 to Solaris 1.1.1 and 1.1.2. There is more to the SunOS 4.x/Solaris 1 issue, but I'm leaving it out this time. Otherwise, everything called Solaris is the later System V-based OS which, for some reason, is still called SunOS 5.x in various places. Solaris 2.6, for instance, is sometimes called SunOS 5.6. They dropped the 2 from what would be 2.7, calling it Solaris 7 instead, and it is also known as SunOS 5.7. SunOS version 5.8 is Solaris 8, and so on.

jlliagre · 03-05-2006, 08:04 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mmhansen

Basically, there is only one important distinction: when someone who worked with Suns before the early 1990s mentions SunOS, they probably mean the old BSD-based OS which ended with SunOS version 4.1.4. Unfortunately, Sun sort of renamed SunOS 4.1.3 and 4.1.4 to Solaris 1.1.1 and 1.1.2. There is more to the SunOS 4.x/Solaris 1 issue, but I'm leaving it out this time. Otherwise, everything called Solaris is the later System V-based OS which, for some reason, is still called SunOS 5.x in various places.

It's named SunOS 5.x for a good reason, you are in fact confusing SunOS and Solaris.
Sun's kernel naming is quite consistent, there has been 5 major releases SunOS 1, 2, 3, 4 and now SunOS 5.
Versions are named starting from 0.
The first internal SVR4 based SunOS was SunOS 5.0, Solaris last release is SunOS 5.10, and the next one is reporting 5.11 (SolarisExpress/OpenSolaris kernel).
Solaris is a marketing name that describes the whole Operating System, not only the kernel.
Just like say Mandriva or Red-Hat releases do not match the Linux kernel versions, Solaris are not required to match the SunOS ones, and in fact never do, although they are released simultaneously.

Quote:

Solaris 2.6, for instance, is sometimes called SunOS 5.6.

Nope, these are different things.

Quote:

They dropped the 2 from what would be 2.7, calling it Solaris 7 instead, and it is also known as SunOS 5.7. SunOS version 5.8 is Solaris 8, and so on.

Correct, the 2 was dropped too, with Solaris 10 (so it is not Solaris 2.10).

susanta panigrahi · 01-04-2010, 07:28 AM

Dear all,

HTH.

SunOS software--A base operating system. It is the Sun's version of the UNIX[R] platform.
Solaris OS--A product composed of two parts. 1.SunOS software and 2.Graphical user environment and the ONC[TM] system with networking (NFS,
NIS, and NIS+)
Hence "Solaris os" is the combination of "sunos" and some graphical user environment.

SunOS 4.x software:-> The SunOS 4.x software range is the Berkeley (BSD) standard and is superseded by the SunOS 5.x software range that conforms to the System 5 Release 4 (SVR4) standard. In actual the "SunOS 4.x" software range is just called "SunOS" and the "SunOS 5.x" range as just "Solaris".