Sun Microsystems: A Look Back at a Tech Company Ahead of Its Time

https://thenewstack.io/sun-microsystems-a-look-back-at-a-tech-company-ahead-of-its-time/

by rbanffy • 7 years ago

42 9 7 years ago

NKosmatos• 7 years ago

My first workstation was a Sun SPARC, the first UNIX I worked with was SunOS (later Solaris) and I still have a lot of memorabilia. Great respect for what Sun has done/offered to the computing field.

someonehere• 7 years ago

Knee deep learning Solaris 7 back right around the time 8 was approaching release.

I was convinced by a peer in my helpdesk job that I should drop out of community college and pursue Solaris training. Back then he said Sun had ~48% of the internet backbone market. Took a few thousand my parents loaned me and paid for an all you could eat training package. From those seven courses I took it helped develop my future career in sys admin work. I was all about Sun.

I think the true nerd moment of my life was learning the history of Bill Joy and figuring out his Sun email address. Sent him an email praising and thanking him for his contributions. I also complimented him on the article he wrote for Wired called, “Why The Future Doesn’t Need Us.” The article stood out as something I felt would be coming for humanity in the next several decades. He responded to my email thanking me for reaching out.

soulnothing• 7 years ago

I was thinking back to when I worked in a data center. We used solaris zones(container) and crossbow(networking). Writing a custom PXE deployer, that bootstrapped our nodes. Then added them to a cross data center cluster. It felt like where we are now with containers. It always seemed a bit ahead, and now those features are more readily available.

znpy• 7 years ago

I wonder what today's equivalent of Sun would be.

rbanffy2• 7 years ago

I don't think there is one.

There is no hardware/software provider pushing the envelope like they did. There is nobody who can poke fun at Microsoft like Scott McNeally did. That last part is not even considered cool anymore.

Apple builds some impressive computers (the MacPro is a good example) but they use x86's and stock GPUs. They don't design CPUs for their high-end kit, and their high end stuff ends on their desktops and their performance is what you'd expect from a high-end PC. Oracle is killing SPARC bit by bit, milking it until it bleeds, then bleeding it dry. IBM makes impressive POWER9 machines, but they don't make workstations anymore.

Some companies build workstations and servers, and even write software to support them. The Raptor folks deserve a lot of recognition for what they did, but they can only stretch so far and you won't see them hiring Frog Design to make their computers prettier. It'd also be pointless for them to make their own OS.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

goatinaboat• 7 years ago

Or SGI or Apollo or DEC or any of those old workstation makers. It really was a golden age, companies making their own CPUs, their own OS, everything from desktop workstations to massive servers. Today’s world where everything is just a PC (even in a rackmount case) is dull and grey in comparison.

rbanffy2• 7 years ago

At least some of the best parts of Solaris and IRIX now live on in other places.

eaguyhn• 7 years ago

In our company at the end of the 1980s we built embedded systems based on Z80 and 8051 chips; our compilers were CP/M. We maintained the builds from a 386i/SunOS environment using make and SCCM. The builds were done using DOS with a CP/M emulator. Builds were run from a SunOS makefile.

Cool stuff for the time.

eldenbishop• 7 years ago

Sun was constantly blowing my mind when I first got into computing. I remember going to my first Java 1 when Sun was showing off the Java Card. There were terminals everywhere and you would just slide your card into the terminal and your X windows sessions would pop up exactly how you left it at the last terminal. I know, its just skipping the login step but it seemed so cool at the time.

Years later at a pre-maker-fair style event Sun was showing off their Java based robotic controllers. They had embedded WIFI and a compiler with a button that would upload the code directly to the device. This was before raspberry pie, IoT and "connected devices". Back then we had to physically update our controllers by attaching them to the PC. It was amazing but sadly WAY too expensive.

Was very sad when their assets got swallowed up by Oracle. I doubt we will ever see their like again.

Sun Microsystems: A Look Back at a Tech Company Ahead of Its Time

Related Stories