Joyent is claiming that they are getting pretty impressive numbers out of running docker images on Solaris, by using some sort of funky shim layer to run Linux in a zone.

I also like to point out that Java, another Sun project, was a big impetus for a bunch of OSes to get properly functioning pre-emptive threading implemented. At the beginning were dark times, and even Solaris was no cake walk. C has copied the Java Memory Model for shared state concurrency, and most of the best papers on Garbage Collection were written in the mid to late nineties, often targeting Java. Subsequently in the 00's, escape analysis made pretty giant leaps forward, leading to the memory system you have in Rust today.

I think people who argue about the best data models for shared state concurrency often forget that they're taking us-vs-them stances on conventions that were all documented by the same individual, the Late, Great, Sir Tony Hoare.

There have really only been two breakthroughs since then. Transactional memory, which is still in a state of discovery and who knows when we'll get forward motion on that (especially since Intel's hardware support went belly up), and object ownership based on escape analysis, as used internally in recent JVMs, and explicitly in a few new languages, like Rust.

Now if only they'd pushed type theory forward, instead of regressing and taking the rest of us with them...