SunOS

SunOS was an operating system made by Sun Microsystems for their workstations and servers from 1982 until the mid-1990s. It was based on Unix, a system that helps computers run programs and manage tasks. The name SunOS was mostly used for the early versions, from 1.0 to 4.1.4, which were built using something called BSD. Later versions, starting with 5.0, were built on UNIX System V Release 4 and were sold under a different name, Solaris. These systems were important because they helped powerful computers work efficiently and were used in many places where big computing tasks were needed.

History

SunOS was an operating system created by Sun Microsystems for their computers. SunOS 1 worked only on early Sun computers called Sun-2 series, including upgraded Sun-1 systems. Later, SunOS 2 added support for Sun-3 series computers. SunOS 4 could run on Sun-2, Sun-3, Sun386i, and Sun-4 (SPARC) computers, though full support for SPARC came later.

The final version, SunOS 4.1.4, came out in 1994 and worked on many computer types, but not all. Sun kept providing updates for SunOS 4.1.3 and 4.1.4 until 2003.

Version history

"SunOS" and "Solaris"

In 1987, AT&T Corporation and Sun worked together to combine popular versions of Unix, including features from SunOS, into a new system called System V Release 4 (SVR4).

On September 4, 1991, Sun announced that their next big operating system update would change from its old style to one based on SVR4. Although the internal name for this update would be SunOS 5, Sun started using the marketing name Solaris. The idea was that Solaris would include not just SunOS, but also the OpenWindows desktop and Open Network Computing features.

Even before the new system was ready, Sun began calling their current SunOS 4 release Solaris 1.0. SunOS 5.0 became part of Solaris 2.0. Small updates to SunOS 4 were still released through 1994, and each got a matching Solaris 1._x name. People often still used the SunOS names.

Today, SunOS 5 is commonly known as Solaris, though the SunOS name is still seen inside the system — in startup messages, the uname command, and man page endings.

Matching a SunOS 5.x version to its Solaris name is easy: each Solaris name includes the SunOS 5 minor version number. For example, Solaris 2.4 included SunOS 5.4. After Solaris 2.6, the "2." was dropped, so the SunOS number was used alone. The latest Solaris version is named Solaris 11 and includes SunOS 5.11.

User interface

When SunOS started with version 1.0, it had a special way to make pictures and graphs on the screen, called the Sun Window System. This included a tool called Suntools to help users. Later, in version 3.0, this was renamed to SunView.

Sun also made a new system called NeWS, which used a special language called PostScript for drawing. In 1989, they released something called OpenWindows. This worked with X11 and could also support both SunView and NeWS programs. It became the main way to use SunOS starting with version 4.1.1.