Timeline for How Unix'y is Mac OS X?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
16 events
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| Apr 15, 2011 at 10:39 | history | edited | Peter Mortensen | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Oct 21, 2009 at 7:14 | comment | added | hasen | If you follow the traditional UNIX philosophy too literally, you can't have a graphical desktop environment. | |
| Oct 2, 2009 at 9:08 | comment | added | user4358 | @Telemachus: Thanks, I just updated my post with the quote. | |
| Oct 2, 2009 at 9:07 | history | edited | user4358 | CC BY-SA 2.5 |
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| Oct 2, 2009 at 0:41 | comment | added | Telemachus | @Nagul: the Unix philosophy quote helps a lot. I wish one of us had put that in our original post. You should think about moving it up into your answer. | |
| Oct 1, 2009 at 22:49 | history | edited | user4358 | CC BY-SA 2.5 |
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| Oct 1, 2009 at 21:47 | comment | added | user4358 | @David Thornley We can debate this ad nauseum, but possibly our differences lie in our interpretation of the Unix philosophy. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_philosophy I happen to think OS X is geared towards usability, and not this (especially the last bit): "Write programs that do one thing and do it well. Write programs to work together. Write programs to handle text streams, because that is a universal interface." | |
| Oct 1, 2009 at 21:41 | comment | added | user4358 | @David Thornley How about booting into a console and then being able to start up and shut down the GUI interface on demand? Or changing default file associations? Or changing power management behaviour? There are a million small things not easily tweakable from the console, because the Mac environment and culture don't encourage or need it. The strength of the Mac is in the GUI, and you're encouraged to stick to the supplied GUI tools. The situation tends to be reversed on Unix systems. Even when the GUI tools are good, they tend to be composed from equivalent CLI bases. | |
| Oct 1, 2009 at 19:51 | comment | added | David Thornley | @nagul: I'm not as up on MacOSX administration as I could be (I live mostly on the Ubuntu box), so what administration requires the GUI? Bear in mind, also, that when I was administering an AIX box a long time ago I didn't want to have to do administration via the command line, but stuck to the supplied tools. | |
| Oct 1, 2009 at 18:27 | comment | added | user4358 | @David Thornely All Unix and Unix-like systems I've worked on can be administered completely from the command-line, and the GUI is a component you can turn off. They also have minimal to no functionality that can be achieved only via GUI. OS X is very different on both counts, wouldn't you agree? My point is that while it is very Unix-like on many counts, it is equally un- Unix-like on many other counts. However, it is MacOS-like on almost all counts. | |
| Oct 1, 2009 at 17:32 | comment | added | David Thornley | MacOSX is a real live Unix with a very different UI layer on top. You can always drag the terminal app into the dock (I did) and have fun with using the Unix internals from the command line (I do). | |
| Oct 1, 2009 at 17:04 | history | edited | user4358 | CC BY-SA 2.5 |
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| Oct 1, 2009 at 17:01 | comment | added | user4358 | @SidneySM Thanks, you're right. By "rewrite" I meant to convey that it didn't have any code in common with its predecessor, the Mac OS, and not that it was rewritten from the ground up. It obviously didn't come out right. I'll fix it asap. | |
| Oct 1, 2009 at 16:54 | comment | added | Telemachus | @SidneySM: In a way, it's lineage is irrelevant. When you use OSX, it feels like Mac a lot more than like Unix. | |
| Oct 1, 2009 at 16:01 | comment | added | s4y | Mac OS X isn't a rewrite of the classic Mac OS at all — it's based on NeXTSTEP. | |
| Oct 1, 2009 at 9:15 | history | answered | user4358 | CC BY-SA 2.5 |