With the news that NCR Corp has joined the ranks of those opting for its Unix implementation for the Intel Corp iAPX-86 processor family , Sun Microsystems Inc’s SunSoft subsidiary finally took the wrapping off its long-awaited Unix System V.4-based operating system environment yesterday. The first implementation of Solaris 2.0 is now available in OEM quantities for Sun’s Sparc RISC architecture at $800. The second, Intel, version was demonstrated at PC Expo in New York, but will remain under the covers – at least as far as users are concerned – until the end of the the year at the very earliest. The two are source- but not binary-compatible, and Sparc applications will have to be re-compiled to run on the Intel version, indeed to take advantage of Unix System V.4 features, existing SunOS operating system users will have to migrate their applications to Solaris 2.0 via the Transition Pack announced recently by SunPro. As well as NCR, which appears to have favoured Solaris over Destiny, the desktop Unix environment now on offer from parent AT&T Co’s Unix System Laboratories Inc – effectively a rival product, ICL Plc, Zenith Data Systems, Ing C Olivetti & Co SpA and Everex Systems Inc join those personal computer manufacturers that have already committed to Sun’s Unix offering, which include Dell Computer Corp, Toshiba Corp, AST Research Inc, CompuAdd Corp and NetFrame Systems Inc. Included in the $800 price-tag for a single desktop version of Solaris 2.0-on-Sparc is SunOS 5.0 – SunSoft’s Unix System V.4 – plus the Open Network Computing environment, Network File System, NIS+ naming service, a transport-independent remote procedure call, Solaris Federated Services – which enable third party networks, such as Novell Inc NetWare, Open Software Foundation Distributed Computing Environment and OSI to plug into Solaris 2.0 multi-threading, symmetric multi-processing, Kerberos security, disk mirroring and striping, real-time support and internationalisation. Development features include Open Windows version 3 (with the Open Look graphical user interface), the object-oriented ToolTalk mechanism for networked data sharing and DeskSet, a bundle of 15 desktop utilities that run under the Open Look interface.
