SunOS/Solaris naming (was: Re: Solaris 2.4)

From: r. 'bear' stricklin <red_at_bears.org>
Date: Thu Dec 5 01:32:00 2002

Some of you got pretty close, but most of you were way off.

The name "Solaris" is a Sun marketing designation for the product
combining some version of SunOS plus OpenWindows.

SunOS prior to 5.0 (Solaris 2.x) is a 4BSD derivative (via Sun co-founder
Bill Joy). As of 5.0 it became an SVR4 derivative. Note that development
continued on the SunOS 4.x line after the introduction of 5.0, since it
represented such a huge shift from the 4.x world (and was horrendously
bug-ridden until 5.4). After Solaris 2.6, the marketing department got
hold of things and dropped the "2.", with the result that the following
release is named Solaris 7.

The chronology, starting somewhere in the 4.0 days:

[...]
------------- SunOS 4.0.3 --------------- 05/89
------------- SunOS 4.1 --------------- 03/90
Solaris 1.0 SunOS 4.1.1B OpenWindows 2.0 02/91
Solaris 1.0.1 SunOS 4.1.2 OpenWindows 2.0 12/91
Solaris 2.0 SunOS 5.0 OpenWindows 3.0.1 07/92
Solaris 1.1A SunOS 4.1.3 OpenWindows 3.0 08/92
Solaris 2.1 SunOS 5.1 OpenWindows 3.1 12/92
Solaris 2.2 SunOS 5.2 OpenWindows 3.2 05/93
Solaris 2.3 SunOS 5.3 OpenWindows 3.3 11/93
Solaris 1.1.1 SunOS 4.1.3_U1 OpenWindows 3.0_U1 12/93
Solaris 2.4 SunOS 5.4 OpenWindows 3.4 08/94
Solaris 1.1.2 SunOS 4.1.4 OpenWindows 3_414 11/94
Solaris 2.5 SunOS 5.5 OpenWindows 3.5 11/95
Solaris 2.5.1 SunOS 5.5.1 OpenWindows 3.5 05/96
Solaris 2.6 SunOS 5.6 OpenWindows 3.6 08/97
Solaris 7 SunOS 5.7 OpenWindows 3.6.1 10/98
Solaris 8 SunOS 5.8 OpenWindows 3.6.2

There are a few maintenance/hardware releases in the Solaris 1.x days
that I left out for clarity. Otherwise it should be complete and
accurate.

I hope it clears things up.

ok
r.
Received on Thu Dec 05 2002 - 01:32:00 GMT