I work at an investment company and I'm not the tech guy in our shop. All our computers are Windows. About 4 years ago we bought an application that had to run on a Sun, so we bought an Ultra60 along with it. The application didn't live up to our expectations and we stopped using both the application and the Ultra60 about 3 years ago.

Now my boss has his eye on another application that he wants to run on the Sun. Since we are a Windows shop our tech guy doesn't know anything about *nix. I've been running a Linux box at home for about 2 years so, by extenstion, I'm reasonably familiar with the Unix environment. However, I know that Linux is not Unix.

The Ultra60 is running SunOS 5.7, and my boss has given me the task of upgrading it to the "latest version of Solaris". Is there a difference between SunOS and Solaris? Can either run on this Ultra60? Is the latest release of one more desirable than the other? My boss is not a *nix person either, and may not have meant "Solaris" precisely, just whatever the latest version of the current operating system is.

Also, my boss doesn't want to spend anything on the upgrade if he doesn't have to. Are either the SunOS or Solaris versions available for no charge? If not, can any other OS's be installed on this box, i.e. FreeBSD, OpenBSD, etc?

Thanks for any help.

SunOS and Solaris are basically the same thing. SunOS 5.7 is Solaris 7, and Sun OS 5.8 and Solaris 8. Prior to that, SunOS 5.6 was Solaris 2.6. The whole number Solaris version is a marketing thing.

As far is you particular system is concerned, it should be capable of running the latest Solaris 9.

Thanks stickman. I'll give Solaris 9 a try.