SolarOS is an operating system (OS) developed by ENCOM. Kevin Flynn's personal server had SolarOS version 4.0.1 installed.
It looks like an modern version of Linux running with Xorg. We can see that the GNU flavor of "top" is running (shows the running process, memory utilisation, etc. In the image, the system is reporting an uptime of 8 days) as is the Linux version of "iostat" (Input/Output Statistics). There is also both an on-screen keyboard and orange power controls in the lower right corner, just like those built into Dillinger's Desk.
In contrast to a standard Linux system, the shell appears to be configured to not display the PS1 variable, and logging in as root displays a warning about no home directory being set (this is uncommon on a linux system, but is often seen on systems like SunOS/Solaris).
Trivia
- It is a direct reference to the Sun OS or Sun Solaris OS, that is Unix based. Probably due to copyright issues the real name wasn't used.
- The first line of output from "iostat" is actually a modified output of "uname" from Sun Solaris, seen again when Sam executes 'uname -a':
- SunOS has been changed to SolarOS
- The hostname field is missing, as if the command run was actually 'uname -srvmpi'
- SunOS 4.0.1 was released in 1988, making the version (and sun4m architecture) accurate for the time period when Flynn disppeared, although the uname format is from SunOS 5, not SunOS 4.
- The kernel release (Generic_50203-03) is missing a digit, most likely a '1' preceeding the '5' since this would match existing Sun patch ID format, although no such kernel patch (150203-03) exists.
- sun4m indicates that the CPU is of SPARC-V8 architecture, which conflicts with the i386 ISA the host is supposedly running.
- The hardware platform, typically SUNW,Model-Name, has been replaced with Unknown,Unknown.
- After Sam determines the active username and operating system (with the 'whoami' and 'uname' functions), he uses the 'history' command to reveal the last commands executed (twenty years earlier), although this is not correct. 'history' is a shell-builtin, not an executable file in /bin.
- From the output of 'history', Kevin appears to prefer the vi editor.
- The directory /opt/LLL/controller likely refers to the location of shooting in the original TRON movie. The laser bay shots (and several others) were all filmed at Lawrence Livermore National Lab (LLL).
See Also
Gallery
