Mastodawn

Tom 2d ago

@DianeBruce 🙋‍♂️
Also running yp!

Scott Blaydes 2d ago

@DianeBruce How many remember that Sun had a unix before Slowaris?

Diane Bruce 2d ago

@sblaydes I certainly do. I still have a SUN 3/60 carcass downstairs and the boot tapes for 4.0.3 and a 4.1.0 I think it was.

2d ago

@sblaydes @DianeBruce It took a very long time before I forgave Sun for making the change from the good version of Unix to the stuff from AT&T.

A Very. Long. Time.

Diane Bruce 2d ago

@nomad @sblaydes Remember when we were all going to switch from sockets to TLI ? Remember the compatibility kludge they added? There was a reason Solaris ended up with the nickname of Slowaris.

Politics/Marketing driven not technically driven.

@nomad @sblaydes @DianeBruce personally, the switch from having to make a new kernel to just patch and boot(if required) was a bonus IME.

Scott Blaydes 1d ago

@ytc1 @nomad @DianeBruce

We found the Solaris admin. jk

I never got to admin a Sun or Solaris box, was just brought in the solve a particular issue.

@sblaydes @ytc1 @nomad I was lucky never to have admin a Slowaris box but still had to deal with them. Oh yes that libc and if you didn't deal with all the fd's on a select, it would fall over and die. Ask me how I know.

1d ago

@DianeBruce @sblaydes @ytc1 I ran SunOS and Solaris for Qualcomm in the mid-late 90s and did a little Solaris 10 in the mid aughts (I think) for $job[0] at UW.

Right now I'm administering OmniOS, an Illumos-based distry, for file servers at $job[1].

You (I) can run but you (I) can not hide.

@nomad @DianeBruce @sblaydes I drank the cool aid, joined ☀️ in 2000, left when oracle took over.
I worked with Solaris from 1991 until 2024.
Still run a personal server, S11, really need to move to OmniOS

@ytc1 @nomad @sblaydes I worked for BSDi for a few years. They were getting into some embedded BSD systems. I run FreeBSD and OpenBSD but also like NetBSD.

1d ago

@DianeBruce @ytc1 @sblaydes I ran BSDi until FreeBSD became a viable thing and BSDi was struggling. It amused me no end when I installed "BSD 4.2" on my home server, since the original version of that was the first Unix I'd ever touched.

Have you heard anything from Rob Kolstad? I recently heard his voice in an interview, I think it was The Serial Port. Took me back.

@nomad @ytc1 @sblaydes I really only knew Mike Karels (co-worker) and Chris Torek (co-worker). I used to chat with Mike at BSDCan. I remember Chris had kitties purring on phone.
One thing that struck me was how bad the serial port driver was on BSDos compared to FreeBSD. I had to debug a panic due to BSDOS serial console weirdness. I honestly thought we (BSDi) would have been better off just moving to FreeBSD and supporting it that way as BSDOS code was pretty stale in places.

1d ago

@DianeBruce I knew both of them through Usenix though I seriously doubt they'd remember me. They were amazingly talented. I felt like such a technical pauper when I chatted with them.

@nomad Mike gave a great talk at BSDCan a few years ago. It's on youtube somewhere. I remember being at the talk.

@sblaydes @nomad @DianeBruce
I was never an "admin" 🙂

@sblaydes @DianeBruce that was Also called SunOS.
Solaris is not the OS.