Close but no cigar, gw.
Berkeley System Design (BSD) UNIX components are a mixture of
presentation and service layers above the OS kernel. Most Linux
systems run an ELF kernel, with derivatives of FreeBSD, the Open
Source versions of BSD components, fitted on top. Mac OS X uses an
Mach kernel with FreeBSD fitted on top.
If you want just a command-line computing environment, you can get
this from Apple for free by subscribing to the Open Source Darwin
project. Darwin is the Mac OS X Mach kernel plus FreeBSD components..
It has been ported to many different processors.
Of course, Mac OS X includes a huge number of Apple exclusive
additional components that live above the level of the Mach kernel
and alongside BSD ... such as the Quartz graphics libraries, user
interface libraries, system management components, applications,
development tools, OOP tools, scripting services, IOKit drivers, etc
etc. Very few of these things are dependent upon FreeBSD .. they use
underlying libraries that are mostly separate from BSD components,
and more efficient.
BTW: There's no such thing as MAC, unless you're talking about the
manufacturer of hand tools, MAC Tools http://mactools.com/ or Media
Access Control (MAC) address such as in your ethernet/wireless card.
"Mac" is a common shorthand but ambiguous as to whether you are
referring to the early hardware systems ("Macintosh") or operating
system ("Mac OS", "Mac OS X"). It is best to talk of "Mac OS" or "Mac
OS X" when referring to Apple's operating system in generic terms.
Godfrey
On Apr 6, 2006, at 9:07 AM, graywolf wrote:
Besides that MAC OSX is a propietory version of BSD. There are
basically two free Unix type OS in the world BSD and Linux (you can
not make a propiatory version of Linux due to the GNU Public
License). Almost all Unix type software can be run on any of those
if you can get the source code and compile it for your system.
Windows is another whole ball of wax. So there are two major OS
camps in the world today Unix and Windows. IBM has embraced Linux
for all its major computers above the PC level (they do support it
at the PC level). MAC has embraced BSD. However about 90% of the
PC's in the world are running Windows because it is cheap (for
OEM's, not consumers).
