[PLUG] SunOS vs Solaris version numbers.

Anthony Schlemmer aschlemm at attbi.com
Thu Aug 15 06:18:57 UTC 2002


I really hate it when a company plays the "version game". It reminds me 
of the play on versions Microsoft played with NT. When NT first came 
out it was rightly a 1.0 version but Microsoft named it version 3.1. I 
guess they jumped versions as a 1.0 product might be perceived in a bad 
way by customers.

I believe they did something similar with Word for Windows as well where 
it jumped from like 2.0 to 6.0. I guess they had to do that to make 
their product appear as mature as WordPerfect. Heck I used WordPerfect 
5.0 back in the late 80s under PC-DOS so WordPerfect was rightly way 
ahead in versions since it had been around for a quite some time 
compared to Word.

I think I got the versions right I'm a bit fuzzy on this stuff after all 
these years.

Tony

On Wednesday 14 August 2002 22:55 pm, Russ Johnson wrote:
> SunOS vs Solaris tends to cause lots of confusion. Here's how I
> understand it.
>
> SunOS was what Sun originally had.
>
> Solaris was what Sun bought, and merged with SunOS.
>
> They merged the version numbers too.
>
> Solaris 2.6 reports "SunOS 5.6".
>
> Solaris 7.0 reports "SunOS 5.7"
>
> Solaris 8.0 reports "SunOS 5.8"
>
> and...
>
> Solaris 9.0 reports "SunOS 5.9" (Surprise!)
>
> Originally, there was something with the 2 and the 6 in 2.6, but that
> caused more confusion, so Sun chose to drop the 2, and just go with
> version 7.0 for the next release, i.e. Solaris 7.0. Originally,
> Solaris 7.0 was going to be Solaris 2.7.
>
> Mostly, I think it's marketing mayhem.  Marketing folks (droids?)
> think a higher number tells folks that it's better. That's also why
> Mandrake jumped versions a while back. Had to be a higher number than
> the competition.
>
> At 10:34 PM 8/14/2002 -0700, you wrote:
> >On Wed, 2002-08-14 at 21:57, Jason Dagit wrote:
> > > uname -a ?
> >
> >It doesn't say Solaris anywhere... just SunOS still:
> >
> >SunOS gere.odin.pdx.edu 5.8 Generic_108528-12 sun4u sparc
> > SUNW,Ultra-4
> >
> >I'm pretty sure Solaris and SunOS are one in the same.
> >
> >--
> >Rob
> >"Google is your friend"
> >
> >
> >_______________________________________________
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> >http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug
>
> Russ Johnson
> Stargate Online
>
> http://www.dimstar.net
> telnet://telnet.dimstar.net
> ICQ: 3739685
>
>
> If everything seems to be going well, you have obviously overlooked
> something.
>
>
>
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-- 
Anthony Schlemmer
aschlemm at attbi.com
>>>>This machine was last rebooted:  17 days 10:24 hours ago<<






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