From dwilli@unf6.cis.unf.edu Thu Jun 24 08:49:58 1993 Date: Thu, 24 Jun 1993 00:52:09 -0400 From: Dennis Williams To: tfb@unf6.cis.unf.edu Solaris 2.1 Dennis Williams COP 3221 In the world of high end operating systems competition is heating up. With competition fierce there are a few topics which any system must address to be competitive. One of the most important is compatibility, both hardware and software. It is much more cost efficient to upgrade to an operating system which will run on your current hardware and will run your current software. Of course it is desirable to upgrade to software which will take full advantage of your new operating system but it may be necessary to retain existing software for some purpose. It is also important that an operating system be available on several different microprocessor platforms. Not to be overlooked in this discussion are multiprocessing and networking capabilities. Solaris 2.1 by SunSoft Inc.(the software division of Sun Microsystems Inc.) offers strong solutions to these problems. Calling Solaris an operating system is a bit of a misnomer. It is actually an operating environment which includes an operating system. The operating system is a new version of SunOS which has been Sun's standard operating system on it's SPARC workstations for some time. The operating system is AT&T System V release 4 compatible. The environment also includes Sun's OpenLook graphical user interface. Where Solaris really shines, however, is in it's Open Network Computing(ONC) shceme. In the network arena Solaris supports all the major protocols >from TCP/IP through some protocols fairly obscure in nature. This provides for convenience in communicating between different networks. Also included in ONC is the Network File System (NFS). Again this is one of Sun's standard pieces of software. It has been used widely as a means of handling distributed files on a network. On the software compatibility side Solaris offers what is referred to as a Windows Advanced Binary Interface (WABI). This allows the use of MS Windows applications without the actual Windows code. The WABI is an added feature for those on the PC platform upgrading from the DOS and Windows systems. Solaris is a very powerful environment. It supports symmetric multiprocessing. This is useful in high speed multiprocessor systems. The work load can be divided symmetrically between processors to maximize resource efficiency. Solaris is also a multithreading operating system. A thread is the smallest piece of code that can be executed independently. The multithreading feature allows the system to execute more than one thread at the time. One of the most enticing aspects of Solaris 2.1 is its cross platform availability. SunSoft recently ported Solaris to the Intel X86 series of microprocessor. The decision to port Solaris to X86 was driven strictly by the massive number of Intel based machines already in use. Solaris is not meant for wimpy boxes. The system requires a 386 or 486 with a minimum of 16Mbytes RAM and 100Mbytes free disk space minimum for a terminal with recommended hardware exceeding these values. There are also plans to port the system to the PowerPC based computers being jointly developed by IBM and Apple. Along with Sun's popular SPARC workstations Solaris has a home on many different pieces of hardware. With support on such a variety of systems, Solaris should attract Software vendors who would be able to write one version of an application which would run in Solaris on any of the supported machines. With such power and wide support Solaris should be a contender in high end operating system market. Pricing of Solaris is around $480 which is virtually the same as Windows NT, it's biggest competitor. The largest barrier to the success of Solaris will likely be Windows users who are uncomfortable switching to a UNIX system. If this group can be convinced of the power of UNIX and Solaris, SunSoft will have a very popular operating system on it's hands.