[rescue] SunOS 5.5.1 inaccessible

[rescue at sunhelp.org]

> > [0] The marketeers took over.  There is no Solaris 2.x for 
> > x > 6, there's only Solaris 8 (SunOS 5.8) etc.
> 
> I wonder, is the Solaris renumbering retroactive? I know that when 
> Solaris 2.x showed up, SunOS 4.x became Solaris 1 retroactively, so 
> would Solaris 5.1 & Solaris 6 be considered valid names now?

No, as others have already posted Solaris x.y equals some version
of SunOS plus a windowing system (NeWS/X11 + window mangler).

I have it on good authority that the reason for the change was that
HP-UX was all the way up to version 10.x (with 11.x on the way), while
Solaris was only 2.x.  Some marketeer "perceived" that customers would
be more likely to buy Solaris if the version number was similar to the
HP-UX version number.  That would imply that Solaris was "just as good"
...since obviously technical factors wouldn't be taken into account.

Bleh.

  --Rip