Date: Wed, 12 Mar 2014 15:11:42 -0500 From: Tim Daneliuk <tundra@tundraware.com> Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: If the BSD become known as Linux, BSD distributions will be millions just like there are on Linux? Message-ID: <5320BF7E.3050106@tundraware.com> In-Reply-To: <D91DE25A-DC4F-4CA3-BD4C-6BE85F886469@shire.net> References: <COL127-W1547F43A4D7DD207ACCB44E8760@phx.gbl> <1d8501cf3e17$d83e5f90$88bb1eb0$@FreeBSD.org> <D91DE25A-DC4F-4CA3-BD4C-6BE85F886469@shire.net>
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On 03/12/2014 12:30 PM, Chad Leigh Shire.Net LLC wrote: > > On Mar 12, 2014, at 11:23 AM, dteske@FreeBSD.org wrote: > >> >> But let's take a step back for a moment... >> >> Apple's Mac OS X is based on BSD and has a wider install base than Linux. So >> in that respect, BSD is already doing great. > > OS X is not based on BSD. It is a mach based kernel, Mach is not a kernel. It is a micro-kernel designed to *host* full kernels. > with a custom graphical interface unrelated to X Windows. That part is only sort of true. It is possible to run X programs under Aqua. > It does have a BSD type user land available, and a BSD type kernel interface to enable the user land. > It is more correct, I think, to say that OS X and BSD share some heritage. > > Chad Well considering that major parts of OSX initially came from FBSD 4.x and that includes the kernel itself as well as much of the support infrastructure, I think this is fundamentally incorrect. OTOH, OSX isn't really BSD any more (to the extent it ever was). It's best described - I think - as "derived from FreeBSD" because they've changed things like filesystem case sensitivity, they us HPFS instead of FFS/UFS/XFS, the filesystem layout is different, and so forth. They've also added a bunch of Apple-specific APIs. As to what is userland and not, I think this is kind of a moot thing these days. I happily move across userlands on OS/X, Redhat, Debian, AIX, FreeBSD, and so on with very little cognitive shift. The biggest differences among these are the tools (like compilers) and locations/layouts for the aforementioned system admin and control files. -- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Tim Daneliuk tundra@tundraware.com PGP Key: http://www.tundraware.com/PGP/
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