[Linux-aus] SCO suspends it's Linux distribution

[Greg 'groggy' Lehey]

On Friday, 16 May 2003 at 17:29:31 +1000, Chris Samuel wrote:
>
> On Thursday 15 May 2003 11:23 pm, Jon maddog Hall wrote:
>
>>> Hang about, isn't Solaris BSD-derived? (-:
>>
>> No, SunOS was BSD derived.  As part of USL, Scott McNeily agreed to switch
>> to a System V base for Sun (and call it Solaris).

Well, in fact they adopted the term Solaris at the time.  Solaris 1
was the complete package round the (BSD-based) SunOS 4 kernel.
Solaris 2 was the complete package round the (System V.4-based) SunOS
5 kernel.  And note that System V.4 has just about the complete 4.3BSD
sources in it.  The file system was UFS, for example.

>> Actually, when Sun got the System V code, it was my understanding
>> that they ripped it apart, and worked very hard to make it a decent
>> operating system, replacing a good deal of the kernel code, and
>> basically just keeping the system call interfaces.

They certainly did a lot of work on it, but SunOS 5.2 (Solaris 2.2)
was still very recognizably System V.4.

> My understanding was one of the major reasons that Sun went System V
> for Solaris was for the SMP scalability. Apparently SunOS's MP
> didn't quite cut it.

I haven't heard that, but most of the SMP work on SunOS 5 was done by
Sun, not by AT&T.  It's possible that System V.4 was a better basis to
start working on.

Greg
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