On Mon, Apr 16, 2007 at 08:45:37PM +0300, Shlomi Fish wrote: > On Monday 16 April 2007, brian d foy wrote:
> > Mac OS X isn't "mostly compatible with UNIX", it is a *nix. > > > > Use.perl is missing from the Web Forums link > > Thanks for you commentary. I disagree about the Mac OS X one - some things > about Mac OS X differ from most other Unix-flavours, including the absense of > most of /etc, their case-sensitivity problems, their extended file properties > (that have often broken perl Makefile.PL) etc. I hate the term *nix because eg the use of dylib rather than dlopen (prior to 10.4), Because dlopen is far less restrictive in what it allows. Given that most open source software hails from Linux, Solaris or *BSD where dlopen is used, it ends up accidentally taking advantage of dlopen's laxness. > no one understands what it is, while "Unix-compatible, a Unix-clone, a > Unix-flavour, etc." is much clearer. It's a FreeBSD fork atop a Mach microkernel. It's pukka Unix, more so than Linux actually is. As I understand it, Linux doesn't derive code from the original AT&T source tree, whereas FreeBSD does: http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/history.html Linux neither uses any of the AT&T code base, nor passes the Unix trademark conformance tests (unlike, say, z/OS) so isn't. Whatever term you choose to use, for whatever reason, does not make you correct when the facts are against you. Unix-flavour would be an accurate description, and you are correct that it is not that similar to many other flavours of Unix, which has practical implications, which you are wise to note. But clone it is not. Nicholas Clark
