SunOS Solaris Differences Post: 42864

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Top Forums UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers SunOS Solaris Differences Post 42864 by rhfrommn on Wednesday 5th of November 2003 01:36:12 PM

11-05-2003

Registered User

Hello,
The technical difference is that SunOS is the operating system, while Solaris is the "operating environment" including the OS plus some other stuff. In fact, if you install Solaris 9 on a Sun server then do uname -a the OS is reported as SunOS 5.9.

However everybody uses Solaris to mean the current version of Sun's operating system so that usage is fine too.

As far as the numbers go:
SunOS 4 was also called Solaris 1. This was still based on bsd Unix. When they switched to Solaris 2 they updated the major number for SunOS to 5. So for example Solaris 2.4 uses the SunOS 5.4 operating system while Solaris 8 uses SunOS5.8. Solaris 2/SunOS 5 on up are sysV based instead of bsd.

Note - There is no such thing as Solaris 2.7, 2.8 or 2.9. It is one of my pet peeves that people call it that, even lots of Sun techs do for some reason . . . Sun changed the naming scheme after Solaris 2.6 to Solaris 7, 8, and 9 instead of following hte old 2.X nomenclature. This kinda makes sense, since each point release was a major release coming about 2 years apart on average. So having them all be 2.something was not too accurate.

Hope that wasn't too long winded, and hope it helps.

rhfrommn

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LEARN ABOUT PLAN9

suninstall

suninstall(1M)						  System Administration Commands					    suninstall(1M)

NAME

       suninstall - install the Solaris operating system

SYNOPSIS

       suninstall

DESCRIPTION

       install-solaris(1M) is now the preferred command for starting and restarting the Solaris Installation program. It should be used instead of
       suninstall. suninstall is symbolically linked to install-solaris.

       suninstall is a forms-based and graphical subsystem for installing the operating system.

       suninstall exists only on the Solaris installation media (CD or DVD) and should only be invoked from there. Refer to the Solaris 10 Instal-
       lation Guide: Basic Installations for more details.

       suninstall allows installation of the operating system onto any standalone system. suninstall loads the software available on the installa-
       tion media. Refer to the Solaris 10 Installation Guide: Basic Installations for disk space requirements.

USAGE

       Refer to the Solaris 10 Installation Guide: Basic Installations for more information on the various menus and selections.

ATTRIBUTES

       See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following attributes:

       +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+
       |      ATTRIBUTE TYPE	     |	    ATTRIBUTE VALUE	   |
       +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+
       |Availability		     |SUNWcdrom (Solaris  instal-  |
       |			     |lation media)		   |
       +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+

SEE ALSO

       pkginfo(1), install(1M), install-solaris(1M), pkgadd(1M), attributes(5)

       Solaris 10 Installation Guide: Basic Installations

NOTES

       It is advisable to exit suninstall by means of the exit options in the suninstall menus.

SunOS 5.10							    9 Sep 2004							    suninstall(1M)

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