4 ms·

Totally honest question: WHY does everyone think it was cool? I can still remember running it in Uni on some of the prized workstations with everyone raving abo

Totally honest question: WHY does everyone think it was cool? I can still remember running it in Uni on some of the prized workstations with everyone raving about it but never got the point about it. Back then I was on Windows and everything I saw on Sun systems looked weird, laggy and just super obscure to me. The whole UI felt like a mix of enterprise and neckbeard charme despite being non-open. It did not seem to run none any of the things I cared about back then. Later on I remembered Sun mainly in context of their stewardship of Java which also didn't help connecting any good feelings to it. So maybe in 2022 someone could enlighten me about what exactly was so cool about Sun?

rusk 5y ago
> everything I saw on Sun systems looked weird, laggy and just super obscure To me this describes what it’s like trying to develop software for Windows vs Unix
copperx 5y ago
I had the same experience. The Sun workstations that I was able to use were very slow compared to the same era PCs running Windows. The keyboard was cool as hell, though. The control key was in the correct position (where Caps Lock is in the standard layout). I do remember that the font rendering was horrible. There was no anti aliasing. Windows had just came up with Cleartype.
ubermonkey 5y ago
In the 90s, commercial Unixes really still ruled the roost. Linux was getting traction, but slowly, so for big-biz use you were looking at AIX from IBM, Solaris from Sun, HP/UX from HP, or something like it. The Sun hardware was materially better, or so I recall. It was also more attractive. I actually still have an Ultra5 on a shelf in my office that, for a time, ran Oakley's online store (which my old company built). It's still a good looking machine. Solaris, too, was widely viewed as better/more workable/easier to use than its competitors. It had more polish. If you're looking at Solaris with the latest build of Ubuntu or whatever in mind, yeah, it's gonna look neckbeardy and hokey. But that's not the world Solaris was the king of. Back then, using a commercial Unix meant you got a LOT of shit that Just Worked out of the box, and generally an easier time getting your shit running.
icedchai 5y ago
The GUI apps were generally pretty bad. I didn't use the default Sun window manager (CDE), which was kind of slow and bloated. I installed either WindowMaker or Afterstep. I forget which, but it made it look like NeXT. The only GUI app I used on my Sun was Netscape. Everything else was done in a terminal (xterm window.) I probably spent most of a week building stuff from source and customizing my system. If you wanted a "Unix workstation", Sun was the best. SGI looked cooler but often getting open source stuff built on it was a PITA. This was during the Windows 95 / NT 4.0 era, so it was definitely a step up on Windows.
- hedora 5y ago
  Ironically, Sun invested heavily in user studies and development for Gnome 2, which is why is was so user friendly. Sun didn't really benefit from it commercially, then thanks to thr CADT development model, Gnome 3 was a massive regression for normal users (and still was a few years ago).
rbanffy 5y ago
> Sun systems looked weird, laggy and just super obscure to me. Workstations typically came with fast SCSI disks. Once I wanted to find a file after a failed install and used `find`. The search came back immediately, empty. I concluded I was doing something wrong, did `man find` to confirm there wasn't any Sun-specific oddity. Then I tried with `find / -name passwd` because I knew that file existed. Result came back immediately. It was probably caching the whole directory structure in RAM, but the instantaneous response really impressed me back then. Mouse was laggy, because, IIRC, it communicated at 9600 bps or something like that. Macs and SGIs were much smoother. > So maybe in 2022 someone could enlighten me about what exactly was so cool about Sun? The one thing I loved was X and its network transparency. I often run NetScape on a beefier box and it was just like having it running on my workstation. Same with software development and engineering tools. I could reach out to multiple computers (and not only Solaris ones, but any Unix) from my desktop easily. The same could be said about any other Unix-based workstation with X (NeXT didn't come with it).
Spooky23 5y ago
Sun boxes were way more performant than anything Intel for some time. I used to run a big CORBA app, and windows hosts would only be able to handle half of the workload form a thread perspective. In that era, you usually scaled up, and Sun gear did that, even giving you mainframe-like segmentation on the E10k boxes. The other thing is that OSS databases mostly weren’t a thing, and commercial database platforms like Oracle or Informix were released for Solaris/SPARC first. I worked for a .gov client that was all about RS/6000 and AIX, and it was painful - you’d wait 3-6 months for some patches. Linux really broke the workstation market circa 1998, and the cracks in the server platform were sort of hidden after the dotcom implosion put lots of gently used gear on the market.
LargoLasskhyfv 5y ago
Maybe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frog_Design https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frog_Design ? Also being different ?
merlyn 5y ago
At the hight of the workstation era, where Sun generally ruled the roost. You've got to compare what you got with a workstation vs. a PC class of the era. The PCs of now-a-days are light-years ahead of what PCs were available in the Workstation era, so much beyond that time, that nobody can think back to that time. This comparision kind of smears some time frames together.. So, in the early 90's , Sun was starting to ship 4-way MP, and 8-way MP. In 95, they introduced 64-bit CPUs just as PCs were really starting to use 32-bit computing. Typical speeds were from 50MHz - 400MHz in this time frame. At the high end you could get up to 256MB of RAM. Sun Frame buffers at the time were doing 1920x1080 resolutions. (or slightly higher, but granted, a lot of these high-res were black & white in the earlier time frames). They came with multiple fast/wide SCSI drives, tape drives, etc. They all came with the vendor's unix. System uptime was usually quite good, months to over a year. You did have some vendor lock with what software was available, but generally Sun was top of the heap, every vendor had something available for Sun. Contrast this with PCs at the time. State of the art PCs were 486 running 50MHz-75MHz, with 8MB of RAM. Maybe 32MB if you wanted to get Windows 95 going. Video was VGA at 640x480, again not much need for more until after Win95 launched. Hard drives were IDE, a whopping two if you were lucky. While SCSI existed on PC, it wasn't very common. Linux and *BSD didn't come out until 1992-93 Even then, uptime of DOS systems or PC unix at the earliest time frame could be measured in days. You had to get _just the right_ hardware to make things work together. By the end of the '90s. Workstations hadn't progressed very far. PC's grew by leaps and bounds, catching up and surpassing workstations handily. PCs were actually fairly stable and the PC unix could give you really decent uptime. But in the before the explosion of PCs, if you wanted power or uptime, or graphics, or disk speed, etc. etc. compared to what else was there, Workstations were the way to go.
mixmastamyk 4y ago
My Windows 95 and 98 couldn’t run more than 45 mins or so without bluescreening. NT was good but had less software and PCs didn’t have enough RAM. A stable multi proc/user machine was a luxury in those days. Being pretty was not a concern for most, and SGI was the choice when it was.

rusk 5y ago

> everything I saw on Sun systems looked weird, laggy and just super obscure To me this describes what it’s like trying to develop software for Windows vs Unix

copperx 5y ago

I had the same experience. The Sun workstations that I was able to use were very slow compared to the same era PCs running Windows. The keyboard was cool as hell, though. The control key was in the correct position (where Caps Lock is in the standard layout). I do remember that the font rendering was horrible. There was no anti aliasing. Windows had just came up with Cleartype.

ubermonkey 5y ago

In the 90s, commercial Unixes really still ruled the roost. Linux was getting traction, but slowly, so for big-biz use you were looking at AIX from IBM, Solaris from Sun, HP/UX from HP, or something like it. The Sun hardware was materially better, or so I recall. It was also more attractive. I actually still have an Ultra5 on a shelf in my office that, for a time, ran Oakley's online store (which my old company built). It's still a good looking machine. Solaris, too, was widely viewed as better/more workable/easier to use than its competitors. It had more polish. If you're looking at Solaris with the latest build of Ubuntu or whatever in mind, yeah, it's gonna look neckbeardy and hokey. But that's not the world Solaris was the king of. Back then, using a commercial Unix meant you got a LOT of shit that Just Worked out of the box, and generally an easier time getting your shit running.

icedchai 5y ago

The GUI apps were generally pretty bad. I didn't use the default Sun window manager (CDE), which was kind of slow and bloated. I installed either WindowMaker or Afterstep. I forget which, but it made it look like NeXT. The only GUI app I used on my Sun was Netscape. Everything else was done in a terminal (xterm window.) I probably spent most of a week building stuff from source and customizing my system. If you wanted a "Unix workstation", Sun was the best. SGI looked cooler but often getting open source stuff built on it was a PITA. This was during the Windows 95 / NT 4.0 era, so it was definitely a step up on Windows.

hedora 5y ago
Ironically, Sun invested heavily in user studies and development for Gnome 2, which is why is was so user friendly. Sun didn't really benefit from it commercially, then thanks to thr CADT development model, Gnome 3 was a massive regression for normal users (and still was a few years ago).

rbanffy 5y ago

> Sun systems looked weird, laggy and just super obscure to me. Workstations typically came with fast SCSI disks. Once I wanted to find a file after a failed install and used `find`. The search came back immediately, empty. I concluded I was doing something wrong, did `man find` to confirm there wasn't any Sun-specific oddity. Then I tried with `find / -name passwd` because I knew that file existed. Result came back immediately. It was probably caching the whole directory structure in RAM, but the instantaneous response really impressed me back then. Mouse was laggy, because, IIRC, it communicated at 9600 bps or something like that. Macs and SGIs were much smoother. > So maybe in 2022 someone could enlighten me about what exactly was so cool about Sun? The one thing I loved was X and its network transparency. I often run NetScape on a beefier box and it was just like having it running on my workstation. Same with software development and engineering tools. I could reach out to multiple computers (and not only Solaris ones, but any Unix) from my desktop easily. The same could be said about any other Unix-based workstation with X (NeXT didn't come with it).

Spooky23 5y ago

Sun boxes were way more performant than anything Intel for some time. I used to run a big CORBA app, and windows hosts would only be able to handle half of the workload form a thread perspective. In that era, you usually scaled up, and Sun gear did that, even giving you mainframe-like segmentation on the E10k boxes. The other thing is that OSS databases mostly weren’t a thing, and commercial database platforms like Oracle or Informix were released for Solaris/SPARC first. I worked for a .gov client that was all about RS/6000 and AIX, and it was painful - you’d wait 3-6 months for some patches. Linux really broke the workstation market circa 1998, and the cracks in the server platform were sort of hidden after the dotcom implosion put lots of gently used gear on the market.

LargoLasskhyfv 5y ago

Maybe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frog_Design https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frog_Design ? Also being different ?

merlyn 5y ago

At the hight of the workstation era, where Sun generally ruled the roost. You've got to compare what you got with a workstation vs. a PC class of the era. The PCs of now-a-days are light-years ahead of what PCs were available in the Workstation era, so much beyond that time, that nobody can think back to that time. This comparision kind of smears some time frames together.. So, in the early 90's , Sun was starting to ship 4-way MP, and 8-way MP. In 95, they introduced 64-bit CPUs just as PCs were really starting to use 32-bit computing. Typical speeds were from 50MHz - 400MHz in this time frame. At the high end you could get up to 256MB of RAM. Sun Frame buffers at the time were doing 1920x1080 resolutions. (or slightly higher, but granted, a lot of these high-res were black & white in the earlier time frames). They came with multiple fast/wide SCSI drives, tape drives, etc. They all came with the vendor's unix. System uptime was usually quite good, months to over a year. You did have some vendor lock with what software was available, but generally Sun was top of the heap, every vendor had something available for Sun. Contrast this with PCs at the time. State of the art PCs were 486 running 50MHz-75MHz, with 8MB of RAM. Maybe 32MB if you wanted to get Windows 95 going. Video was VGA at 640x480, again not much need for more until after Win95 launched. Hard drives were IDE, a whopping two if you were lucky. While SCSI existed on PC, it wasn't very common. Linux and *BSD didn't come out until 1992-93 Even then, uptime of DOS systems or PC unix at the earliest time frame could be measured in days. You had to get _just the right_ hardware to make things work together. By the end of the '90s. Workstations hadn't progressed very far. PC's grew by leaps and bounds, catching up and surpassing workstations handily. PCs were actually fairly stable and the PC unix could give you really decent uptime. But in the before the explosion of PCs, if you wanted power or uptime, or graphics, or disk speed, etc. etc. compared to what else was there, Workstations were the way to go.

mixmastamyk 4y ago

My Windows 95 and 98 couldn’t run more than 45 mins or so without bluescreening. NT was good but had less software and PCs didn’t have enough RAM. A stable multi proc/user machine was a luxury in those days. Being pretty was not a concern for most, and SGI was the choice when it was.