Ok, this is my situation.

I grew up as a mac user, and continued with it for many years. then i switched to windows, then to linux. linux at this point is the most gratifying experience from the bunch. but now, i had heard quite a bit about mac being bsd based, i had thought that they had just used some code from the freebsd kernel to make theirs a bit more modernized, then added a cmd.exe type thing.

but after some real research, it looks to me like macOS is a full out, honest to god. freeBSD fork! a modularized OS, where aqua replaces X, but you still have full access to the UNIX CLI. they even have even gone open source with their os!

to me, this seems like the single most brilliant move made by apple in the past ten years. someone very high up must have read eric s. raymonds "the magic cauldren", because its a move straight out of it. imagine, the power of unix with the single greatest GUI ever conceived of by man.

what i want to know is, is there anyone here who uses a mac? are my assumptions true? or is this propaganda to bring in more power users? i will never give up totally on linux, but an OSX/Linux dual boot is looking remarkably attractive.....

Although it's up for discussion and you'll probably get varying views, I'd have to agree, OSX is one of the best operating systems available. I don't personally use a Mac in my day-to-day life, and I've almost always thought that Macs were toys. OSX is finally a serious operating system from Apple. The only problem with OSX is one that every OS (except Windows) faces, which is the lack of applications. Sure, there's an office suite, and sure there's a myriad of web browsers available, but certain applications are still only available on the M$ platform. This is maddening for all of us, wether you're on OSX, Linux, or FreeBSD.

Try playing Grand Theft Auto on your OSX box.

It is of note to point out that OSX isn't entirely open-source. The Darwin interface is still propietary... But much of the other major components of the operating system are derivative from other systems, like BSD or SYSV.

Regarding a dual boot OSX/Linux config, that will probably require some serious thought; like a PPC-version of (SuSE?) linux!

check this out. http://www.apple.com/macosx/technologies/darwin.html darwin is open, quartz and aqua are closed. now here is another question for people, can you compile generic tarballs on a mac? i use linux, and i dont find the number of apps constricting at all, a switch to mac would mean all the linux apps plus the mac ones. i can definately live with that....

one other thing, theres a ppc version of slackware

many apps will happily cross compile, and if not there's Fink, which is a set of libraries to support other unix apps

I use a Mac and a pc; the pc is the newest, but I use the Mac the most. This is primarily due to the fact that I'm most comfortable with the Mac. I bought the pc because some software that's available for pc is hard to find for Mac (most notably games) and is more expensive. Also, I wanted to try Linux out too and didn't want to install Yellow Dog on my Mac. The Mac OS X interface is like nothing I had seen before or since; I've been running OS X on my Powerbook G4 ever since it came out. It's far more stable than previous versions, and this is due to the UNIX kernel that it is built on. The only downside is that it's a memory hog--I wouldn't recommend using less than 256 MB. This is one area where Linux has the advantage; it doesn't require as much hardware to give good results.

OS X has different operating modes depending on the programs you use with it: Carbon, Cocoa, Classic, and Darwin. Carbon is the mode that all programs written for OS X use. It takes full advantage of all the new features such as preemptive multitasking and protected memory. Cocoa is a mode halfway between Carbon and Classic, programs that run in this mode aren't fully optimized for X, but still run without launching the Classic mode and they don't take full advantage of X. Classic is a mode that Apple put in so that users can transition to X without having to run out and buy all new software right away. When a Classic program is launched, the OS also launches OS 9 which runs in the background only to facilitate the Classic program (QuarkXpress 4.1 works this way--it was never written for OS X). As a result, programs in Classic mode behave the same way as they do on an older Mac--they don't run with any of the benefits that OS X provides. Once the program terminates, the Classic mode shuts down. One point of clarification: you can run programs in the different modes at the same time in the Aqua interface; only the ones which are Carbonized take full advantage of OS X. Finally, Darwin is the command-line interface (Terminal), which is UNIX through-and-through. Up until Apple released X11 for OS X, all UNIX programs had to be run in this mode (yes, OS X runs UNIX software too), but since the release of X11, users can also run UNIX programs in a GUI interface as well as a command-line one.

There is one caveat, however, to running OS X: it cannot be run on machines without at least a PowerPC G3 processor AND 128 MB memory. I know that the "older" machines with PowerPC 601-604e processors can run OS X too, but it requires a processor upgrade to G3 or better and the memory upgrade. Apple doesn't officially support this, so they say you do it at your own risk (in other words, don't call tech support looking for help). Sorry to ramble, but I hope this info helps.

thank you, it has helped alot at this point, all i need to do is plunk myself down in front of a demo machine at a computer store to monkey with it a bit, then im sold. i still cant believe that they went that far with the unix integration...

Yes, actually the genesis for OS X was way before Apple CEO Steve Jobs rejoined the company in 1998. I believe it started with a company he started called BeOS (if I'm wrong here, somebody please correct me). Circa 1995-1996, they came out with an operating system called Rhapsody which was UNIX-based and designed to run on the PowerPC family of microprocessors. It bore a striking resemblance to OS X, although not quite as elegant. Unfortunately, it never really went anywhere, although there were a few machines produced with it loaded on them (if you can find one, you've got something worth hanging on to!). When Jobs came back to Apple, they acquired BeOS too and started work on the project, culminating with the release of the beta version of OS X in late 2000.

Not BeOS, BSD --> NeXTSTEP --> OpenSTEP --> Rhapsody --> OSX
http://www.levenez.com/unix/

It's true, there is a PPC for Slackware. And, of course Gentoo, which is a source distro, should compile for any archecture (if you've got time to kill).

I will argue the lack of application support, though. If you're in a corporate or professional environment and you require specialized software for your business and don't have tons of developers handy to write you a homebrew solution, you're most likely going to acquire software from a third-party vendor that runs only on Windows- and most likely doesn't work well with Wine.

Thanks, bentz, for that correction. For some reason I had BeOS on the brain

hey everyone.

Im a mac user (iMac FS G4 800/768mb ram) using Jaguar (OS 10.2.6) and am really interested in exploring the UNIX/LINUX world. I'm not very familiar with UNIX and never use Darwin(terminal)....

What do I need to do to run linux on my mac? are there any live version that wouldnt require me to install linux to my HD(im worried about messing up my osx config and files)? at this stage i just want to play around with it a bit...

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Live Slackware-based CD
Live Debian-based CD

I don't know anything about Macs but to run Linux and Windows you need to partition your hard drive and install LILO or grub or monkey with Windows' loader. I guess it'd be something similar for Macs.

I'm confused about being interested in *nix yet never using your terminal - seems like that would be the place to start, as you've got 'BSD inside'. *g*

Do you have a broadband connection? You can download Apple's X11 beta that would give you a UNIX GUI. Any GUI-based UNIX programs (like OpenOffice) will run under this and it won't require you to partition your hard drive or anything. Here's the URL:

http://www.apple.com/macosx/x11/

thanks for the info. im downloading openoffice now. Is there a list anywhere of unix programs that run on OSX?

i wish i had a new mac. grrr.