Is the Mac OS, old ones and new ones, based of the Linux OS?
Wednesday, February 24th, 2010 at
21:12
Is the mac OS, the oldest one to the newest one, originally based off the Linux OS? My teacher says it is, and i say its not. Can someone please clear this up?
Tagged with: Linux • linux os • mac os
Filed under: Linux
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No Linux is an entirely different kernel to that of MAC
MAC is based on a variation of the UNIX kernel called XNU
http://www.unix.org/what_is_unix.html
http://osxbook.com/book/bonus/ancient/whatismacosx//arch_xnu.html
LUg.
You are correct. It’s actually based on Unix. If it was based on Linux, Mac OS would be open source.
Mac OSX is based on FreeBSD.
Hi, you’re partially correct – the oldest of the Mac OSes were NOT *nix based at all…
I’ve never been a Mac fan but I do remember that in the past Mac OS was called "System x" (starting from System 1.0 to System 7.1 or something) before it had its name changed to "Mac OS" in version 7.6 or so. There was no such thing as a "Shell" or command line interface in those, it was fully GUI.
Mac OS originally used a totally proprietary kernel, which was the Finder itself and had nothing Unix behind it. I think one major source for confusion was A/UX (Apple UniX) which is very old (ran on something like the Motorola-based Macintosh II) but this is nothing like original Mac OS or Mac OS X today as all the programs supplied were Unix form and it required a compatibility layer like WINE to run "then normal" Mac OS programs.
I don’t think it was until there was Mac OS 10 before they became known as "Mac OS X". These are really Unix-based, derived from NeXTSTEP after Steve Jobs returned to Apple.
As I guy who uses Unix and Linux on a regular basis, be careful with the word "Linux". Linux is, in fact a Unix-based system that was specifically developed from scratch to run on the IBM PC, by primarily Linus Torvalds. I would put that the Unixes on PC (such as NetBSD) are direct ports of Unix systems to the PC. The BSD family in particular has had a long run on ancient PDP / VAX machines before reaching the x86 IBM PC, being the ORIGINAL from AT&T. As a general rule, most Unixes aren’t as flexible as Linux and are much more integral / specialized.
OS X is based on BSD, while Linux is closer to the System V branch of Unix.
Linux got its start in 1991. Mac OS got its start in 1984. OS X (as OS X Server) got its start in 1999.
Linux was developed decades after but on a pattern of UNIX, but is NOT a UNIX-based system since it doesn’t use any basic UNIX system for its foundation. The classic Mac OS is not based on UNIX. Mac OS X is built on NeXTSTEP OS which was based on BSD UNIX. The link below shows OS X as a fully POSIX system, but Linux is not.
There was no "System X". Apple used the nomenclature of System whatever for their pre-"Mac OS" versions. The change to using the term "Mac OS" has nothing to do with the build of the OS. It was simply a change in nomenclature.
There was always a shell or command line in each and every Mac operating system. The confusion comes from the fact that Apple did not divulge the access point of the command line for the classic versions. Only developers were aware of it. Apple did not think consumers had any interest in programming or development of software; it seems a fair assessment.
The Finder is not the kernel. It is an application, a type of file browser. A kernel is a basis of an operating system, not a file manager or file browser. Linux uses a monolithic kernel that is more or less a copy of the typical UNIX kernel. OS X uses a hybrid kernel that is not like Linux or any UNIX kernel. It was an improved kernel based on the Mach kernel (a micro kernel) developed at Carnegie Melon University by a group of engineers that included Avie Tevanian, later head of software at NeXT Computer, and then Chief Software Technology Officer at Apple Computer.
It is redundant to say OS 10 became known as OS X. The "X" is Roman numeral ten. Of course, it also reflects uniX and neXt.
There is no important result to come from comparing Linux and OS X. They are in most ways quite similar, but in other ways quite different. The GUI of OS X is the most advanced of the three most popular home and small office platforms (Windows, OS X, and Linux). The security of OS X and Linux are virtually the same. We all know about the security, or lack of security, of Windows. The availability of useful, fully compiled applications is on the order of Windows scale of 10, OS X scale of 5, Linux scale of 2. You can expect the Linux fans to howl at that notion, but it is a reasonable assessment. How can they expect large scale development when they hoover at one-fifth of OS X’s market share?