Solaris/x86 rant (was: Any advice on Solaris laptops?)

[Jon 'maddog' Hall]

On Fri, 2007-06-22 at 09:33 -0400, Tom Buskey wrote:
> On 6/21/07, Jon 'maddog' Hall <maddog at li.org> wrote:
>         > And there's the retro naming of SunOS 4.x to Solaris 1.x.
>         
>         ummm, that was way more than a "retro naming".
> 
>         SunOS was based on the BSD kernel and the BSD code, modified a
>         long time
>         under Sun.
>         
>         Solaris was based on System V.4, with Sun ripping it apart and
>         basically
>         re-writing it.
> 
> 
> I'm talking about the naming, not the actual OS.  The original SunOS
> had always been called SunOS.  When they came out with Solaris 2.x,
> (or SunOS 5.x) they started calling the original BSD based SunOS 4.x
> Solaris 1.x.  The documentation in those days said SunOS + Openwindows
> == Solaris.  Without Openwindows, it's just SunOS.  Customers just
> called 4.x SunOS and 5.x/2.x Solaris.

> 
> Even worse IMO, uname -s says SunOS on both.  I had to rewrite a few
> shell scripts to look at uname -r to get 4.x or 5.x.
> 
> When SunOS (BSD) was still in use, there was alot of confusion with
> the names, etc.  It's been a long time since I used a SunOS system
> thank goodness.  I'm sure it would feel archaic. 
> 

I had forgotten that they had done that.  I do remember thinking at the
time how boneheaded it was.
>  
> 
>         SunOS was related to Solaris much the same way that Ultrix
>         (BSD based)
>         was related to Digital Unix (OSF/1 ripped apart and re-written
>         by
>         Digital).
> 
> Digital changed the name too which broke fewer scripts.   I liked the
> way it mixed BSDisms and SysVisms.

We wanted to use the name "Unix", but could not do that until we had
passed the test suites from X/Open.
>   
> 
> I ran into an issue porting csh scripts from Ultrix to SunOS, Solaris,
> OSF/1 (not Digital Unix yet), HP/UX and Irix.  I ended up converting
> it to ksh (a good idea anyways) because *csh* in SunOS and Solaris
> didn't work the same way.  I used ksh because we had a version on all
> the systems (we added it to SunOS) and /bin/sh on Ultrix didn't do
> functions. 
>  
>         As a side note we never really released a "V1.0" of Digital's
>         OSF/1 
>         system.  We started with V1.2, I believe....we figured no one
>         would use
>         a V1.0 :-)
> 
> Unfortunately not enough people used Digital Unix either :-(  We went
> from a Dec shop running Ultrix to a Sun shop running SunOS because the
> apps were not getting ported to Digital Unix.  I liked my Dec 3000
> better then the Sparc 5s but our users needed the apps. 
>  
> 
> 
> 
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-- 
Jon "maddog" Hall
Executive Director           Linux International(R)
email: maddog at li.org         80 Amherst St. 
Voice: +1.603.672.4557       Amherst, N.H. 03031-3032 U.S.A.
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Board Member: Uniforum Association
Board Member Emeritus: USENIX Association (2000-2006)

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