[rescue] OS X is certified UNIX

[Mark]

On 14 Jun 2007, at 09:05, Geoffrey S. Mendelson wrote:

> On Thu, Jun 14, 2007 at 08:23:36AM +0100, Mark wrote:
>> When NEXTSTEP first morphed into OS X it was still heavily reliant on
>> NetInfo. As such so were early OS X versions. Of late less and less
>> is depending on netinfo and I get the impression they are trying to
>> ditch it in favour of proven UNIX methods. It's not UNIX as I
>> understand it from using Solaris and AIX, for gods sakes it doesn't
>> even have 'pg'! It is currently much closer to UNIX than it was
>> though, which can't be a bad thing...
>
> IMHO you are confusing UNIX as in what came from AT&T and when. BSD  
> was built on
> what was then UNIX V7 (and before that older versions of UNIX)...

OK, you lost me...

> Next's BSD was based on a modified BSD Kernel with the Mach (is it  
> an acronym or
> named after the scientist?) Kernel on top of it. It also included  
> BSD commands.
>
> MacOS X was something different. It was a (successfull) attempt to  
> take
> the base BSD/Nextstep system and port the Macintosh GUI to it. However
> the shell and command libraries were considered an option that most
> people would not want. I think even in Tiger, the "BSD subsystem"
> (terminal, shells and commands) are an option.
>
> There also is a large library of "Darwin Ports" both from an  
> organized group and a
> individuals of other open source programs, most of them originaly  
> developed for Linux.


That I already know, my point was one of the things that was carried  
over, wrongly IMHO because it's horridly proprietary, was the NeXT  
NETINFO system - the config database that basically rips up the 'UNIX- 
like' standard in favour of their own network centric solution. It's  
dying now (I hope!) in favour of using the traditional 'everything  
in /etc' approach, which makes life easier for developers of ports  
and the like, as well as pulling daemons over from FOSS sources.

> There still is no real crossover from the Mac GUI to the UNIX GUI  
> (X windows), however
> the Tiger implementation allows you to use Aqua (the Mac GUI) as an  
> X window mananger.
> A prime example of this is Open Office, which is an X Windows  
> application and can not
> use many of the services of Aqua. A side project, called Neo  
> Office, combines the two
> by replacing the Open Office user interface with a Java one.

I'm sorry to sound recalcitrant but 'Grandmother' and 'suck eggs'  
come to mind... I know you can't be expected to know my level of  
expertise but I've been using OS X client since it was a buyable  
product, and I've used Rhapsody right back to DR1 issue, as well as  
NS3.1 on SPARC. I am very familiar with the OS X side of things, and  
my outline knowledge of UNIXs and Linuxs gives me good grounds for  
comparison on common features like daemon configs, user accounts etc.

Oh and you mentioned A/UX (which went nowhere after a while) and  
missed out AMIX (which was one of the first implementations of System  
V release something, then went nowhere). :)

-- 
Mark Benson

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