[sillywalk]

> I sat down a to a Sun workstation that was described as a "thin client". This was slicker than my Linux system at home (which I mostly ran as a terminal using Lynx or something to browse the web) and featured the Sun browser

I wonder if that was a JavaStation?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JavaStation

[bzzzt]

I don't think so, that thing was dog slow due to its Java based OS and I can't associate it in any way with the word 'slick' ;) Sun workstations without disks were also often used as thin clients. It was quite simple to boot them from the network and use an NFS root or use them as a graphical terminal.