Help with Solaris.....any help would be nice

Question

I have to write a paper comparing and contrasting Solaris with DOS/MSDOS.....you wouldnt think this would be hard but it is......is ththere a place where I can find a head to head comparsion? If not perhaps some of you familiar with Solaris could give me some points to start with......I should point out I have never used or seen Solaris I am completely new to this area and it may seem simple but the truth is Im a little overwhelmed by all the information....cant see the forrest for the trees...........so any help would be nice ....thanks in advance

Answer 1

Hi,
Solaris is so much more advanced an OS than DOS that a comparison is not straightforward, but here are some less than exhaustive suggestions. Please bear in mind I m not a DOS person, and these are just my personal thoughts on the subject; apologies to Microsoft afficionados for any mistakes.
Similarities:
Both DOS and Solaris are Operating Systems. They provide access to machine resources, like a printer port, or a disk ( through the filesystem), by providing an Application Programming Interface, thus saving programmers from learning the underlying details and machine language of each machine they use. So for example in DOS compiler routines make use of INT 21h to access system services.In solaris we use the system call interface (which does a similar thing underneath).
They also both provide a command shell for ordinary users. In DOS we have command.com, in Solaris you may use Korn shells for example.
Differences
DOS is a single user operating system. Solaris is multiuser, multitasking and multiprocessing.
That is to say Solaris supports multiple programs running on the system at the same time. It will context switch between them to give the illusion of concurrency on a uniprocessor system (time-slicing). On a multiprocessor some tasks will run concurrently.
Many users can log on to a Solaris system (via a serial terminals, or a network connection (telnet or X windows)) and run programs at the same time. Full networking facilities are built in.
Dos only provides the ability to fileshare across the network, using the add on Lan Manager.
Because multiple users run processes (threads/tasks ...) concurrently, Solaris provides extensive security, which DOS doesnt. Each process is owned by a user and runs in its own virtual memory space and is prevented from interfering with any other process memory or other users processes. The operating system and its data is held in protected kernel memory and not directly accessible to processes, so malfunctioning user program cant crash the system accidentally or maliciously.
Devices and files are protected through filesystem permissions, so a device or file has an owner, a group owner and various permissions attributes such as read/write/execute.
Solaris also implements filesystem Access Control Lists (ACLs).
Solaris runs in 32bit protected mode on x86 processors, giving it access to the full address range of the processor (4GB using 4k pages). DOS uses the 16bit segmented memory model.
On ultrasparc systems or the forthcoming Intel Itanium systems, Solaris runs in 64bit mode, giving it access to vastly more memory and
faster computation. (note also DOS only runs on x86 processors).
Who are you writing the paper for? It would probably help some of the readers here with posting suggestions. Some specific questions would be good too.
However, you should try to get access to a solaris system on a network and maybe have a friendly sysadmin show you around a bit.
Do you know anyone with a LINUX system? Solaris and LINUX are variants of the UNIX OS and for your purposes a comparison of LINUX and DOS may suffice.
Hope that is some help.
Ralph
SUN DTS