I worked in a big lab of about 100 engineer and scientists in the early 2000s. 2000-2005 more and more high-end SUN workstations were replaced by up-spec Linux

I worked in a big lab of about 100 engineer and scientists in the early 2000s. 2000-2005 more and more high-end SUN workstations were replaced by up-spec Linux machines. Only a handful of mostly CAD SUN workstations stayed. Main reasons were the Linux and GNU development environment slowly overtook the Solaris one in convenience - in the end even the SUNs ran mostly gcc and the whole open source stack. Also getting drivers and (patch) installation was fairly easy for Linux and a major headache with Solaris.