The answer is not that easy ,but should i answer in the professional way as always or in a personal way !
Well , in here i think the personal way is better.
For more than 15 years I have been a fan of Sun. I can't forget the early days of the internet. When I used to connect to internet through a SHELL account to the only ISP server in Egypt ( 1994 ) at IDSC. And instead of going to Gopher or use PINE ,I just keep digging with my limited privilege shell account to find what this OS got to give ( SunOS).
A 2400 Budrate speed was efficient to create my 1st own shell scripts and executes it, The SunOS UNIX platform was a solid one at that time ( and still - now called Solaris ).
I still recalls how System Admin of the server used to monitor my shell whenever I log in so he is ready to kick me out whenever there is a slight resource utilization increases by my early dummy scripts. After a years we became a friends when I was the Sun support engineer who migrated all old servers to the new models.
It was amazing that i were logging to the Sparc5 workstation. ( mid-sized pizza box )! Yes it is true this machine where named as pizza box because it was same size of it. We upgraded those machines later on to the V880 servers ( an office refrigerator sized).
In many customer sites I was doing support to servers of SPARC 5 , and some of those servers were running non-stop from 1994 till 2003!
Its funny that in one day I had to do a clean up to one of those servers.That was the day i had to shutdown the server. Can you imagine what I found inside it! when i opened the cover for the 1st time i thought that a gray backing is inside the box and then i discovered that it was the dust have created a foam shaped backing covering all space inside the server. and a circular hole for the internal fan!
The customer took a photo for this server before clean up and after. I think those servers can be in Guinness Records for the uptime ( over 10 years ).
Anyway it was all reflecting a solid like a rock H/W and O/S with innovation in the design to be the smallest foot print for any UNIX server you can find in those days - do you remember how big the VAX machines was !
Anyway , I always admired Sun Technology , Specially for the TCP/IP part when Sun Servers used to be the routers of the early internet at that time. No wonder that Solaris starts up as a real router by default.
With lots of friends inside Sun Microsystems I sensed the unique culture that makes that company innovative. If you look on the History of Sun ( Stanford University Network) you will know that Scott McNealy ( Sun Co-founder and former CEO ) who have the enthusiasm with his colleges to make the 1st UNIX workstation. So innovation was the heart of SUN.
Well apart of this , Sun managed to stay for a long time ( 27 years ) as one of UNIX gate keepers. And that is a thing that have be respected when the rest of H/W vendors mixed UNIX and Windows to complete their portfolio.
IBM had AIX , HP had HP-UX , and Sun had Solaris. those are the dominant UNIX operating systems in IT industry now.
To be continued ....
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