Isn't MacOS based on Unix which came originally from Bell Labs?
I used linux for years but finally left it because it seems almost impossible to get everything one wants on a distro.
That market is so fragmented its a quagmire.
Yes and No. MacOS is based on Job's visionary but failed NexT Computers OS called NeXTSTEP which was was ported from BSD Unix.
Unix originally was developed at Bell Labs by Thompson and Ritchie in 1969....but Unix evolved to many different variants by the late 1980s when the NeXTSTEP multitasking OS was developed for NeXT machines. What those 3 guys did in 1969 (kernel and shell) was revolutionary but not what we would consider a modern OS.
Fun fact: In the summer of 1969, Thompson's wife, Bonnie, spent a month visiting his parents to show off their newborn son. Thompson took advantage of his temporary bachelor existence to write a good chunk of what would become the Unix operating system for the discarded PDP‑7. The name Unix stems from a joke one of Thompson's colleagues made: Because the new operating system supported only one user (Thompson), he saw it as an emasculated version of Multics and dubbed it “Un-multiplexed Information and Computing Service," or Unics. The name later morphed into Unix. (
https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-strange-birth-and-long-life-of-unix)
Of course, Ritchie also created the C programming language...as well as its predecessor, B. These men shaped the modern world as much as anyone...
Exactly what can't you find in one distro? Linux is the dominant OS in my field (AI). Aside from Time Machine which remains THE killer backup app, I can't think of another killer app that Ubuntu/Debian or Fedora is missing. I don't game but then again, MacOS isn't exactly a gamer's platform.