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

[matty91 at bellsouth.net]

On Wed, 31 Dec 2003, Chris Ricker wrote:

> 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.
>

I am starting to wonder if migrating OS X to Linux makes sense. With the
introduction of the Linux 2.6 kernel, and the scalability and security
enhancements, I wonder if Apple might consider using the Linux kernel
instread of the Mach micro kernel? From a raw resource perspective, Apple
would gain the development efforts of thousands and thousands of
developers, though porting it would prob take time. Has anyone studied the
Mach kernel? How  does it stack up with other OSs on multiple procs?