[ale] OT: Re: posting to Linux mail list

[Chris Ricker]

On Sat, 20 Dec 2003, aaron wrote:

> As I believe I have pointed out before with info like...
> <http://developer.apple.com/unix/index.html>
> ...there is nothing of "emulation" about it. The integral, low level FreeBSD 
> Unix layer handles the overwhelming majority of OSeX network interaction and 
> program API's. The full FreeBSD kernel (currently FreeBSD 5 with OSeX Panther 
> 10.3.x) is about as far from "rudimentary" as it gets.

Not really. All your basic OS functionality (memory management,
multitasking, scheduling, etc.) is provided by Mach. The Unix emulation is
through the FreeBSD / NetBSD mish-mash OS personality which rides on top of
that.

To me, it's not appreciably different than installing Cygwin on NT and
calling that "Unix on the desktop".... Neither really are, or are "desktop
Unix done right" -- they're both command-line unix-like worlds (for the most
part, though some aspects of both OS X and cygwin's Unix layer are just
weird) side-by-side with basically separate, non-integrated, non-Unix GUI
worlds.

*shrug* I'm not sure what a really graphical desktop-oriented Unix would
look like (or if it's possible -- how do you GUI an inherently textual OS?),
but OS X ain't it, IMO.

later,
chris