I'm a huge fan of linux and Unix systems for thier stability and console tools. However, I'm not impressed at all with the X enviroments (Gnome, Kde, BlackBox) for every day use. I don't mind using them for my server since I mainly use the console anyways.

For everyday use I still find my WinPC's much easier and simpler.

Now i've heard that that OSX 10.2 is built from FreeBSD(Unix) but still as simple to use a all the other Mac OS's. Now this I find very interesting.

Now to my question. Is the Unix portion of the OS intact?
for example:
Can I still get to a Bash shell?
Will my current Bash scripts still work?
Is ssh as simple to use and setup as it is in linux?
Is there a gcc (C and C++) complier built in?

And most importantly does if fell like *nix?

Yes to all, except to the last. It feels like Mac, the regular mac user will never find out of the shell or bash script. On ocations, he will find himself a bit disoriented when errors occur when compiling any new software.
By the way, not only 10.2 (codename jaguar) is based on freebsd, but the whole OS X series.

Mux

can you still admin the system through ssh the way you can with *nix?. or does it have to be thought the GUI?

The reason I'm asking is before I spend the time looking into checking out the OS for myself I just want to get some other *nix user feedback. I will have to go to a store and mess around with the system there (which I don't think they will like) since I don't know anyone with OSX and that is just a hassle.

Can I snag there Window Manager and compile it on my GNU/Linux System? =) =)

The biggest problem with OSX is that it is not very network aware. We
have a few of these beasts at work and they have been almost as
difficult to integrate into our network as 'doze boxes. Until Apple gets
their networking together, I won't recommend OSX to anyone.

You can administer the system through the command line, but you will
run into little "gotchas" from time to time. Most of these concern
Apple's philosophy on where applications should reside, and the fact that
they haven't set up OSX to network cleanly yet.

For example, with 10.2, they still haven't got NIS compatibility working
in such a way that users can log in from the console login prompt, though
they can log in via telnet, ssh, or whatever.

You are also unable to do remote displays from one system to another,
which is a real pain.

You cannot use the OSX windowing system on anything but OSX, it's
not written using the X protocol, but rather Apple's proprietary API.

I'll stop complaining. It's a good OS, it's just still in its infancy.

If you've been working with OS X lately maybe you can answer something i haven't found anywhere.

It has built in pppoe support (it is actually the same code used in freebsd) but in the isp where i work (which has almost 70% of its customers using mac's) we've found it to be extremely unreliable in some specific cases. After some research i found in bsd forums that it was a problem with the pppoe implementation, still unsolved (remember that it is only in some specific cases). But i can not tell customers that they can't use broadboand because there system's pppoe implementation isn't quite ok.
Therefore i need to find an alternative, so i want find out if OS X uses the same pppoe implementation i've seen in linux, which rp-pppoe. I've asked in their forum if rp-pppoe is used in os x but haven't received a response, and i've also searched in Mac's developer site but haven't found any info.
If they are not the same, maybe my solution is to install rp-pppoe in those os x machine which suffer these problems (by the way, the problem is they get disconnected every 5 to 10 minutes).
Would you happen to have an answer?

Mux

ive heard that apple may ditch the motorolla chip and switch to intel, making OSX installable/usable on the pc. (i've heard their planning on this because the motorolla chips are slow.) rumors heard on techtv.

if they did this, id give it a try.

Mux,
I don't actually have an easy answer. We have these machines connected
via ethernet, with static IP addresses.

What are the specific cases (specific hardware? specific version of OSX?)?

Mux,
Have you made sure the users' MTU settings match yours?

http://www.macosxhints.com/article.p...20712014842725

Goatdemon,
The only reason I don't currently own any Apple computers is because
their OS(s) have always sucked. I love the hardware, but am not willing to
use an inferior OS just for the hardware. I don't (anymore) have the time
to muck around with linux on exotic hardware without much return on my
investment. So, now that Apple has Seen the Light, I keep eyeing those
Ti books, but have yet to be impressed enough with the OS to shell out the
money.

who said shell out, and i didn't say buy, i said try. the buying coming after the trying if good enough. and yes, if i liked it i'd buy it.

Actually its IBM and I believe it will be 64-bit processing. I'd like to shed a little light on this topic. I've been a Linux user for 2 years now using Slack. I bought a PowerBook because I felt it was the best laptop because it was free of Windows. I do not regret my choice for one minute.

However, I miss Linux everytime I use this. The GUI on this is pretty damn cool, but so is X's WM if you ask me. To compare the two is hard. I also miss virtual desktops. Probably the thing I miss most is having the GUI separate from the OS. There was something just nice about runlvl 3 and having to tell X to start. If you are pretty hardcore with Linux you'll like OS X much better than windows of course but still opt for Linux any day of the week. There are little things I miss that are actually big things to me. The term on here is no where near as good as my favorite Eterm. You can paste things into it the way you can with Eterm. These are just a few of the examples.

Well, I bought my wife an iMac for Christmas/birthday. I must say
that now that I use this thing at the console (at work I generally
just ssh into the macs), I'm less impressed than before. The
vector drawing display looks good, but moves slowly. The
networkability (as alluded to above) is terrible. I spent most of
yesterday trying to figure out why the damn thing wouldn't talk to
the outside world with dhcp, even though it could talk to my linux
box w/o a problem, and my linux box could talk to the outside
world. Well, it finally worked and I have no idea why. This is
why I don't like GUIs as setup tools, I couldn't find any cacheing
of the IP address, but somewhere in OSX's bowels is a cache
file for DHCP, and it doesn't have "dhcp" in its name. All I could
do was repeatedly turn off and turn on the ethernet card, and
muck around with my cable modem and the hub attached to it.
Blah. Well, that's what the wife wants. . .
I'll slowly learn more about it, and I'm sure it's not as bad as it
feels right now, just different. I hope.

I have never used the mac (or rarely used it, but not os X) What's so greate about the mac os X gui? I'm quite pleased about how my KDE looks and feels. How is that better on the mac?

OSX's GUI is based off of the old Next GUI, which was all vector
based, not pixel based. So, everything on the display is
scalable (I think it's PostScript, but I'm not sure). The look is nice,
and it actually has a very usable, if slow layout (as opposed to
KDE or Gnome, which have everything and the kitchen sink, and
all the crap that fell down the drain included, most of which isn't
necessary, and just slows down their use). BUT, I don't really
want to get into a war about the best WM/GUI, I don't like many of
them, so it isn't worth my time or the board's resources to argue
about it again (not that I am accusing you of doing so, I'm just
trying to extricate myself the hole I'm digging).

By the way, I thought the old Mac OS was absolute garbage.
(keep digging, Moses)