Published at LXer:

Today's post, as the title suggests, is veering slightly off the beaten path of this blog's general content. But, in keeping with this blog's tradition (and mission) of exploring all things Linux and Unix, it's not too far of a stretch. Hopefully the "Mac" in the title didn't put anyone off (Like, say "Vista," might ;). We're actually going to be looking at their underlying Linux subsystem, which is where we come full circle and it all makes sense. Mac has been fronting their BSD'ish CLI for quite a while now and, if you can use RedHat, Suse, FreeBSD or any of the other myriad varieties of Linux on the market today, OS X's insides should be easy enough for you to figure out. I'm happy, also, that Mac has a Linuxy ( Is that a word? judges? ;) command line interface. The marrying of the fancy windows interface with the bare bones power of Linux should make it easier for the next generation of computer-savvy users to not only enjoy the pretty pictures ( and the funny sounds they make when you click on them with a pointing device), but also (by necessity) possess a rudimentary knowledge of the more powerful underpinnings of all that Window dressing.

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