Ok, I gotta ask this question, I have just begun fundamentals of UNIX in college and have learned or heard that Mac's OS-X is a linux based os! Does this mean that unix shell commands work in OS-X? I have no experience with os-x yet. I know it's a stupid question but I gotta know!
MAC OS-X is an BSD variant, so that would make it Unix.
Hope that helps.
I adminstrated a handful of OSX servers a few years ago, OSX 8 I think. Structurally, OSX feels a lot like any other BSD variant. The problem I had is that apple inserted a layer of abstraction to make the GUI work with the system utilities, and it was easy to make changes to the system from the command line that wouldn't show up in the GUI and created interesting states after reboot. Networking and server startup/reset, IIRC, were especially "creative". There's a whole bunch of commandline utilities that are supposed to automagicallly update all the differenct configuration files to keep the GUI happy, but I don't remember what they are right now.
If you need an OS to play around with for your class, I would suggest a BSD or linux.
My class is using Fedora 10 from a "Live cd" it is just a beginner fundamentals/scripting course, I was just surprised to see an OS-X section here, I don't have much experience with Os-X other than I have ran it thru virtual machine to have a look. I never realized how many flavors of Linux were avaliable until I started this course and then to learn that Apples OS-x was a variant of UNIX somehow!
Now I'm curious and have asked my Professor some questions but his input was just to strictly stay with Fedora as that's what the course materials cover. I appreciate the replies and honestly have about a million more questions at this point but I probably need to do some more research!
What brought all this on was one of my lab assignments is to explain the difference between Unix and Linux and since this is not covered in the text book I turned to the web for answers and have been a little overwhelmed with the results and still have never found a straight forward answer! From what I've read, the only difference I can come up with is that Unix is an actual OS where as Linux is a Kernel not an OS! WHich at this point does not make much sense to me yet!
Thanks
Corey
"one of my lab assignments is to explain the difference between Unix and Linux"
That's not a very fair question for an intro level class.
The really short answer is "Many millions of lines of code".
The not so short answer would be that Unix is an OS, copyright owned by Bell Labs while Linux is a kernel, and depends on a crapload of utilities from the GNU project to put the whole OS together. Linux tries to be POSIX compliant, I'm not sure Unix is entirely POSIX compliant either.
The longer answers would explain the differences in the kernel architectures, schedulers, process tables, device handling, etc. Feelings about how those would work in the "perfect system" are the types of feelings that start flamewars.
Good luck with your class!
LOL! I'm not finding alot of the questions fair for an intro class, espicially when they are not covered in the course material, worst off, this is a week 1 lab question. I'm still stuck on wk 1 lab and I'm already in wk 3
Thanks for the reply
Corey
A clarification - The Unix copyright is owned by Novell. AFAIR, they acquired it via USL and the Destiny project.
I don't mean to cut this discussion off, but you could have found the answer to your very basic questions using Google and searching the net for 10 minutes.
These forums are not for homework problems or holding hands of students too lazy to do their own research.
There is no reason to come here and ask a question that is so basic, that only one Google search and you would know that OS X is based on BSD.
In fact, I don't think the question 'What is the difference between UNIX and Linux?" is so difficult. Anyone with Google and can search and do a bit of research and write a very nice response.
So my reply is simple.
Don't come here and ask people to do your simple research for you. Show some self-motivation and do research (your own work) before posting in forums asking questions you can easily answer with Google and a few minutes of focused analysis.
I appologize, I did google the question, wikipedia the question and many others and got so many different answers that it confused me and thought that this would be a place to get a strait forward answer! Clearly this forum must not be for newbies as it states, I'll take my questions else where from now on! Maybey you should consider removing the "Dummies" section if you don't want to answer basic questions!
Referring to squosl's post (and going somewhat OT here to correct a misconception or two):
One is better served not to refer to any Mac OS version released prior to 5 September 2000 as 'OS X'. The facts are as follows:
- OS X 10 Public Beta (Fall of 2000) - marketed even though Steve Jobs wasn't "completely satisfied" with how it looked or ran;
- OS 8, 8.1, 8.5 9.0, 9.0.1 (everywhere but USA) 9.0.4, 9.1 - Not versions of OS X -- based on the original Mac 'classic' core as modified for E-RISC Macs in the years 1994 and 1995;
- Every Mac OS version since 1 April 2001 has been a Mac OS X, including the pared-down builds on the iPhone, development of which delayed the release of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard (say it with me: "Steve, you're such a perfectionist!"
).
BZT