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UnixMac · Jan 29, 2006, 08:00 PM

I tried to do a search for this, but it's hard to come up with a good search string.. so I appologize in advance if we're

here, but a guy on another message board (car related) is insisting that I'm wrong, and that OS X is NOT a unix.. that it's a "unix-like" or "other" type of OS.

Can any experts on this shed any light?

thanks..

blackbird_1.0 · Jan 29, 2006, 08:13 PM

The underlying part of Mac OS X is BSD Unix. Mac OS X is a unix-based OS. I think it's more unix than Linux ever will be.

mduell · Jan 29, 2006, 08:21 PM

See What is Mac OS X? and the Unix Timeline.
In my opinion, OS X is not Unix(tm), but it is unix-like (along with Free/Open/Net BSD, Linux, and friends).

TheoCryst · Jan 29, 2006, 09:54 PM

Agreeing with mduell. It isn't exactly a UNIX, but it shares enough qualities to be called UNIX-based or UNIX-like. Definitely closer to UNIX than Linux, but still not quite there.

techManiac · Jan 29, 2006, 10:02 PM

Check out http://www.unix.org/what_is_unix.html which give a history of UNIX and its copyright starting with ATT.

Detrius · Jan 30, 2006, 03:44 AM

I think that technically it's POSIX compliant, but they never went through the cost to get it certified as such.

OreoCookie · Jan 30, 2006, 05:27 AM

Unix is a trademark, one that nobody really cares that much about anymore.
One of OS X' predecessors was an `official unix', that's more than Linux can claim. However, I really doubt that this has any real significance nowadays. Usually operating systems like OS X, FreeBSD and Linux belong to the category of *nix operating systems

UnixMac · Jan 30, 2006, 09:55 AM

All good replies, thanks for the help gentleman.

Gavin · Feb 3, 2006, 12:28 PM

It's very similar to the Zipper argument.

Officially Zipper is a brand name by a company that went out of business decades ago. YKK and a thousand other companies make sliding clasp fasteners; guess what everybody calls them. ;-)

Language usage will always win over official rules. It's UNIX because everybody says it is.

Stradlater · Feb 3, 2006, 12:32 PM

Originally Posted by UnixMac

I nominate this smiley for inclusion in MacNN 2006.

mduell · Feb 26, 2006, 08:34 PM

Anyone know the outcome of this lawsuit?

As legal battles heat up over who owns the rights to the Unix operating system, another dispute has been quietly simmering over the rights to the Unix name itself.

Apple Computer is being sued by The Open Group, the San Francisco company that claims ownership of the Unix trademark, for using the term Unix in conjunction with its Mac OS X operating system without a license. Apple has countersued, asking a judge to declare that the trademark is invalid, because the term Unix has become generic.

production_coordinator · Feb 26, 2006, 09:45 PM

http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/unix/

This is what apple has to say about it...

P · Feb 27, 2006, 01:25 PM

The interesting part about The Open Group suing Apple is that The Open Group used to list Apple as a supporter of the Single UNIX specification (as a hardware developer) long after they sued Apple. It also included Digital, Compaq, Lotus and others, all which had been absorbed by other companies by that time, but still. I also seem to remember that A U/X was certified according to some ancient version of the standard.

Anyway, no operating system can be cetrified according to their criteria - only complete environments (ie OS and computer) can be.

Also love the smiley, btw.

P · Feb 27, 2006, 01:26 PM

dupe

alphasubzero949 · Feb 27, 2006, 03:08 PM

OS X is not UNIX nor is it BSD UNIX with a GUI.

Like NeXTSTEP, OS X consists of:

Mach Kernel (which isn't monolithic)
Source code from BSD UNIX
Display PostScript
Objective-C
Object-oriented application layer + development tools

Many of those remnants are still in OS X and can easily be seen in your preference files (NS stands for NeXTSTEP).

You can say OS X is UNIX-like but it is NOT true UNIX. Neither is the Linux kernel.

CharlesS · Feb 27, 2006, 04:33 PM

Originally Posted by alphasubzero949

Display PostScript

Quartz is not Display PostScript.

Chuckit · Feb 28, 2006, 02:28 AM

Originally Posted by alphasubzero949

You can say OS X is UNIX-like but it is NOT true UNIX.

What makes Unix Unix? Is System V the only Unix? Any POSIX-compliant system? What?

york28 · Feb 28, 2006, 04:04 AM

A little piece of trivia: OS X's kernel is called xnu (X is Not Unix).

Tyre MacAdmin · Feb 28, 2006, 10:03 AM

Quote from the Apple site:
"Mac OS X is a super-modern operating system that combines the power and stability of UNIX with the legendary elegance of the Macintosh."

http://images.apple.com/macosx/pdf/M...UNIX_TB_v2.pdf

http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/unix/

I think that pretty much wraps it up!

P · Feb 28, 2006, 12:31 PM

Originally Posted by alphasubzero949

OS X is not UNIX nor is it BSD UNIX with a GUI.

Like NeXTSTEP, OS X consists of:

Mach Kernel (which isn't monolithic)
Source code from BSD UNIX
Display PostScript
Objective-C
Object-oriented application layer + development tools

Many of those remnants are still in OS X and can easily be seen in your preference files (NS stands for NeXTSTEP).

You can say OS X is UNIX-like but it is NOT true UNIX. Neither is the Linux kernel.

While I agree that OS X is not UNIX in the strictest defintion of the word, I have to disagree with much of the rest of your post. NeXTStep (and Openstep) used various versions of the Mach kernel but the newest was Mach 2.5, which was still a monolithic kernel. Only Mach 3.0 (and later) was a true microkernel. OS X uses a kernel which is based on Mach 3.0, but it does not use it as a microkernel. It is still a monolithic kernel for performance purposes.

The userland POSIX environment is based on FreeBSD, which in turn is based on the old BSD.

Display Postscript is no longer part of OS X - it was replaced with Quartz during the transition to OS X.

P · Feb 28, 2006, 12:40 PM

Originally Posted by Chuckit

What makes Unix Unix? Is System V the only Unix? Any POSIX-compliant system? What?

What makes a Unix officially Unix is, right now, the certification the Open Group offers. They have the trademark Unix, and basically what they say goes. You can read up on what it requires to get certified on their site, but yes, there are a bunch of System V-specific calls that you have to support.

I really hope that Apple wins that suit, so Unix becomes a generic term rather than a trademark. That would make so much more sense than the current "Unix-based", "Unix-like", "POSIX-compatible" PC talk.

madmacgames · Feb 28, 2006, 01:16 PM

Originally Posted by P

I really hope that Apple wins that suit, so Unix becomes a generic term rather than a trademark.

It already is a generic term. The courts don't decide that, the public does. When/if it goes to court, the court looks at the use of the term to determine if it has become generic or not, but the only way a court will say a term has become too common for trademark is if the term has actually become commonly used, which it has.

"Unix" is only a very specific thing to a few renegade techies. To everyone else, it is a generic term that can be applied to any *nix system (meaning unix-like).