The name of Solaris

Gins · 08-10-2005, 12:25 PM

Npwadays I am studying Solaris 9.0 operating system. I have learnt the word 'Sun' is coming from the words 'Stanford University'.

I just want to know the origin of the word 'Solaris'.

Unix was an old operating system. The flying Finn Linux Torvalds was behind the new operating system and it is 'Linus + Unix ' , Linux.

Do you have any idea as to the name of Solaris?

acid_kewpie · 08-10-2005, 12:34 PM

just some name that has "sunny" connotations i would assume ... solar = relating to (the) Sun

cwolf · 09-06-2005, 01:51 AM

Solaris is the new name of the SunOS since it is SVR4 based (Solaris 2 OE released 1992).
Since version 7 it is called Solaris 7,8 or 9. However things like the kernel still use the SunOS 5.x convention.

jlliagre · 09-06-2005, 02:10 AM

Solaris is not equivalent to SunOS, so can't be described as its new name.

SunOS is only the kernel name, there was SunOS 1, 2, 3 and 4 which were BSD based, then SunOS 5 which is indeed System V Release 4 based.

Solaris is the name of the whole environment, think distribution.

Solaris 2.0 starts with SunOS 5.0 kernel, while Solaris 1 retroactively name SunOS 4.1.1 based distributions and the following 4.1.x ones.

Solaris 2.x matched SunOS 5.x until SunOS 5.7, from which Solaris dropped its leading "2." .

SunOS 4.1.1+ <-> Solaris 1
SunOS 5.0 <-> Solaris 2.0
SunOS 5.1 <-> Solaris 2.1
...
SunOS 5.5.1 <-> Solaris 2.5.1
SunOS 5.6 <-> Solaris 2.6
SunOS 5.7 <-> Solaris 7
...
SunOS 5.10 <-> Solaris 10
SunOS 5.11 <-> Solaris Express/ OpenSolaris/ Solaris NV / Solaris ?