Sun Microsystems

Sun Microsystems is one of the major UNIX vendors. Its main products are the Solaris operating system, designed to run on Sun's own SPARC workstations, high-end servers, and Intel's x86 architecture, and applications using the Java programming language.

Sun is the major sponsor of OpenOffice.org, and a leading sponsor of GNOME, but has only recently produced its own Linux distribution - the Java Desktop System.

Newer Sun hardware adheres to the IEEE specification for Open Firmware - a FORTH based interactive firmware program. This allows fine-grained control over the hardware, such as setting the hardware to interact over a serial terminal if the standard keyboard/monitor console interface is unavailable.

Operating systems Sun hardware
NetBSD claims that its memory management is superior to Linux's on Sparc. However its installation on Sparc hardware may, comparatively, be more difficult. OpenBSD also has a Sparc port.

For Linux, a Debian port runs on Sparc.

For the UltraSparc, a Gentoo port is available.

Sun's Solaris also runs on Sun hardware. For educational or development users, Solaris is free to download, or is available from Sun for the cost of the media.