Chapter 1. An Introduction to Solaris

The UNIX system is very successful. At the time of writing there are over 3000 UNIX systems in active use throughout the world.

—S.R. Bourne, The UNIX System, 1983

Sun systems have shipped with a UNIX-based operating system since the first Sun-1 workstation was introduced in 1982. Steve Bourne's quote indicates how relatively small the UNIX market was at that time. Today, millions of UNIX systems are deployed, running a variety of applications ranging from single-user systems, to real-time control systems, to mission- and business-critical environments—and Solaris represents a large percentage of these systems.

The Solaris installed base has rapidly increased its since its inception. It is available on SPARC ...

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