Mac OS X more Linux than Unix?

[SylarDX85]

Good one. More drastically: "Don't argue with an idiot. He'll only drag you down to his level, and then beat you by experience."
😀

No seriously, I never got the "let us bash the Mac" think. What's the problem of those people? Isn't everyone allowed to buy what he wants? Why do we Mac users have to justify our decision on which computer we use?
It's just pathetic and gets boring.
Don't waste your time.

From my own experience; people arguing with me why I paid 2500€ for a laptop a few years ago are now completely happy Mac users themselves. 🙄

Agreed you are absolutely right!

 

[QuarterSwede]

So i ran the information from the posts above by him, this is what he told me...

Not true, there base kernel is near Identical, If you knew code you would know that.
its kernel is not the os, they are not they same but they are way more alike then you would like to believe. windows has 30% Unix code. but its nothing like the Linux kernel, osx is modified past the 65% margin of the Linux kernel.


that's why they dont have to comply to the open source intuitive, but they started out with the same direction, of being unix that can be modified without being recompiled the memory usage structure is their biggest similarity . ngome is a pile of s***, but that's what every version of Linux uses, almost.

hey use the same base Ideas but The main xnu is not Unix at all,but it uses very similar response to Linux kernel , they are not even the same code but they do the same thing. it looks like osx has moved even closer to bsd in the last few updates xnu bsd

That right there shows that he doesn't have a clue about what he's talking about. He's making it sound like he's informed but in reality it's a bunch of BS.

I have a friend that used to be just like that. Know it all that cruised through school and university. Now that he's matured and worked for a while in the real world he's dropped the BS act.

 

[mac2x]

So i ran the information from the posts above by him, this is what he told me...

Not true, there base kernel is near Identical, If you knew code you would know that.
its kernel is not the os, they are not they same but they are way more alike then you would like to believe. windows has 30% Unix code. but its nothing like the Linux kernel, osx is modified past the 65% margin of the Linux kernel.


that's why they dont have to comply to the open source intuitive, but they started out with the same direction, of being unix that can be modified without being recompiled the memory usage structure is their biggest similarity . ngome is a pile of s***, but that's what every version of Linux uses, almost.

hey use the same base Ideas but The main xnu is not Unix at all,but it uses very similar response to Linux kernel , they are not even the same code but they do the same thing. it looks like osx has moved even closer to bsd in the last few updates xnu bsd



Okay, so that is what I got back, have no idea where to start.

Lots of good advice above. 🙂


Your friend is clueless.

 

[old-wiz]

Here is more... "but Linux is different . the code can be rewritten without being recompiled, so it can be changed much easier , osx uses a modified Linux kernel called XNU"

This is absolute nonsense.

Your friend doesn't have a clue about code. "code can be rewritten without being recompiled" is ridiculous. Of course you can rewrite code, but if you don't recompile it it won't do anything. The compiled code is what gets executed.

Furthermore, XNU has nothing to do with Linux. Go read the Wikipedia entry about XNU.

that's why they dont have to comply to the open source intuitive, but they started out with the same direction, of being unix that can be modified without being recompiled the memory usage structure is their biggest similarity . ngome is a pile of s***, but that's what every version of Linux uses, almost.

"modified without being recompiled" shows a total lack of understanding of the relationship between high level languages like C and executable code.

Responding to your friend is a waste of time. You would be more productive taking a leak.

 

[MisterMe]

From my friend:

Linux is a kernel in Unix, so yes both ways.

Others have already said it, but here are a few more facts to show you that your friend is just full of it. Linux is not a kernel in Unix, Linux is a kernel in GNU. GNU is is one of those ubiquitous acronyms. It stands for GNU's Not Unix. GNU is a project started by Richard Stallman in 1983 to write a Unix workalike OS that was free of Unix code. The project made a lot of progress, but was not able to go live until 1991 when Linux Torvalds wrote the Linux kernel. Read and be wise.

UNIX is a bit older. The name is now a registered trademark of The Open Group. The two Unix flavors, AT&T and BSD, along with IBM's AIX have been unified into the Single UNIX Specification. Since MacOS X 10.5, MacOS X has been certified UNIX 03. Other developers who have certified UNIX 03 operating systems available are Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Oracle (Solaris), and Fujitsu (also Solaris).

Microsoft has been involved with Unix since the 1970s when it licensed Xenix from AT&T. Microsoft Xenix on the Radio Shack TRS-80 Model 12 was for a time the most popular Unix in the world. Today, Microsoft continues to support Unix. Interix is an optional full-featured POSIX/Unix environment for Windows NT-based systems. It runs on top of the Windows kernel as part of Windows Server 2008 and Windows 7 SUA (Subsystem for Unix-based Applications).

Windows has nothing to do with Linux. Windows NT is not based on Unix or a Unix-workalike. Windows NT is POSIX-compliant and OS/2-based. Microsoft split from IBM over disagreements about OS/2. It ported the Windows APIs to the OS/2 kernel. OS/2 was the work primarily of a group of former developers from Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) lead by Dave Cutler (also from DEC). Their work was heavily influenced by their experience with DEC's VMS and RSX-11.

I almost forgot. Apple developed a distribution of Linux, more as an experiment than anything else. However, it is available. Apple's mkLinux ported Linux to the Mach microkernel. It is available here.

Having worked with Linux, Apple chose UNIX. Furthermore, Apple has since doubled-down on UNIX. It is now taken custody and purchased essential UNIX technologies such as CUPS.

There is some cross-pollination between Linux and UNIX. CUPS and GCC are two obvious examples. However, the notion that UNIX will migrate to Linux is a pure fantasy.

 

[emiljan]

Also correct me if I'm wrong but doesn't OSX use a micro kernel derived from the mach kernel developed at Carnegie university while Linux uses a monolithic kernel.

For anyone wondering what the difference is; in a micro kernel the kernel only functions as the bare minimum required to run the operating system while in a monolithic kernel the entire OS is running in kernel space alone.

 

[old-wiz]

And the original DEC Unix was an derivative of the GE/MIT Multics system. DEC wanted a smaller version of Multics for their PDP computers, so they wrote Unix and a lot of the commands are the same between the two systems.

 

[MisterMe]

... DEC wanted a smaller version of Multics for their PDP computers, so they wrote Unix and a lot of the commands are the same between the two systems.

Wrong. UNIX was developed by AT&T Bell Laboratories after the Multics project disbanded. It was a small operating system. The name was a play on the earlier OS to indicate that it was small. DEC PDP-8s and PDP-11s were small computers. Bell Laboratories had a lot of DECs around because they were used in a lot of rack-mounted instrument control applications. Much of the work on UNIX was done using DECs. But the whole point of UNIX is that it was portable. DEC computers were not essential elements of the OS. That said, DEC minicomputers--PDP-8, PDP-11, etc.--were popular among scientists and engineers outside Bell Laboratories as well as inside. UNIX was also popular because it was portable and used C rather than assembler as its systems language. UNIX and DEC were a match made in heaven. Everyone thought so--except DEC! DECs CEO, whose name I forget, was committed to DECs proprietary OSes. He disparaged UNIX. Eventually, DEC relented and began working in earnest to support UNIX on DEC hardware. Unfortunately, it was too late. DEC was bought out by Compaq which was, in turn, purchased by Hewlett-Packard.

 

[old-wiz]

Looks like the years have made me forget some details of history of Unix. I remember it was done on DEC systems, but forgot it was done by AT&T. Those were the days when Bell Labs was a real tech powerhouse. Great tech.

 

[GGJstudios]

Looks like the years have made me forget some details of history of Unix.

Don't feel bad. The years have made me forget .... um.... what was I saying? 😀

 

[r0k]

As early as 1994, I started tinkering with Linux. Slackware 1.something. I had used Multics, SCO Unix and Solaris at work and I liked and enjoyed tinkering with *nixes.

When I heard that Mac OS was becoming Unix based, I was interested but it was still cheaper to tinker with Redhat and Suse on former Windows boxes than to buy a Mac. Or so I thought. Finally, when the Mac Mini came out, I picked one up on the first day. I was delighted. I tinkered but it still wasn't my "main machine". I kept it down in the basement running "headless" and I would log in to it from a Windows box through VNC to "tinker". I thought about making my main desktop a Linux box but decided I'd try a Macbook. Best decision I ever made. I still have a few boxes around running Linux but the rest of our house runs Leopard and Snow Leopard.

I honestly believe I could "get by" running Linux as my desktop OS but with terminal sitting there underneath OS X, I have to ask myself why. I can enjoy a first class well designed GUI written by a company (Apple) that understands how to make a seamless and enjoyable end to end user experience, but terminal is still there underneath when and if I want it. Why would I opt for Linux? Only if I couldn't afford a Mac.

As for which Unix is more "pure", I would have to say I don't really care. There are things about Linux I think are more "pure" like the ability to export displays and run things on one machine and view them on another (which OS X native apps don't seem to know how to do at all). And no I'm not talking about Remote Desktop, Screen Sharing or VNC. I'm talking about the ability to assign displays on an app by app basis. But hey, no biggie. Most things I want to do on another *nix box can be done easily enough in ssh in terminal so I live without the ubiquitous ability to assign displays on OS X like you could on Linux or Solaris.

@SylarDX85: That statement about changing things without recompiling has a teeny tiny itsy bitsy grain of truth. In Linux, it is possible to have dynamically loaded kernel modules to change things without modifying and recompiling the kernel. This is probably what your friend was talking about. Whether this is true about any available OS X kernel is perhaps a question that could be addressed by the OS X 86 community (those hackintosh folks) who are always trying to tinker with the OS X kernel to make it run on whatever hardware they have lying around.

 

[SylarDX85]

As early as 1994, I started tinkering with Linux. Slackware 1.something. I had used Multics, SCO Unix and Solaris at work and I liked and enjoyed tinkering with *nixes.

When I heard that Mac OS was becoming Unix based, I was interested but it was still cheaper to tinker with Redhat and Suse on former Windows boxes than to buy a Mac. Or so I thought. Finally, when the Mac Mini came out, I picked one up on the first day. I was delighted. I tinkered but it still wasn't my "main machine". I kept it down in the basement running "headless" and I would log in to it from a Windows box through VNC to "tinker". I thought about making my main desktop a Linux box but decided I'd try a Macbook. Best decision I ever made. I still have a few boxes around running Linux but the rest of our house runs Leopard and Snow Leopard.

I honestly believe I could "get by" running Linux as my desktop OS but with terminal sitting there underneath OS X, I have to ask myself why. I can enjoy a first class well designed GUI written by a company (Apple) that understands how to make a seamless and enjoyable end to end user experience, but terminal is still there underneath when and if I want it. Why would I opt for Linux? Only if I couldn't afford a Mac.

As for which Unix is more "pure", I would have to say I don't really care. There are things about Linux I think are more "pure" like the ability to export displays and run things on one machine and view them on another (which OS X native apps don't seem to know how to do at all). And no I'm not talking about Remote Desktop, Screen Sharing or VNC. I'm talking about the ability to assign displays on an app by app basis. But hey, no biggie. Most things I want to do on another *nix box can be done easily enough in ssh in terminal so I live without the ubiquitous ability to assign displays on OS X like you could on Linux or Solaris.

@SylarDX85: That statement about changing things without recompiling has a teeny tiny itsy bitsy grain of truth. In Linux, it is possible to have dynamically loaded kernel modules to change things without modifying and recompiling the kernel. This is probably what your friend was talking about. Whether this is true about any available OS X kernel is perhaps a question that could be addressed by the OS X 86 community (those hackintosh folks) who are always trying to tinker with the OS X kernel to make it run on whatever hardware they have lying around.

Thank you very much!