Date: Thu, 8 Apr 2004 23:47:05 -0400 From: John Von Essen <john@essenz.com> To: freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org Subject: Max OS X and BSD Message-ID: <91A01A3C-89D8-11D8-91B3-0003933DDCFA@essenz.com>
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I need to get something cleared up in my head because it is driving me nuts. It has to do with the relationship between Mac OS X and BSD. For starters, I am an "old" NeXT user. I used NeXTSTEP 3.x and OPENSTEP 4.2. I remember back in 97, Apple acquired NeXT software and thus acquired the OPENSTEP 4.2 operating system. At the time I was running OPENSTEP 4.2 (along with the ill-fated WebObjects) on a Pentium II box, and running NEXTSTEP 3.3 User on a NeXTStation Mono Slab. Around that time, Apple started work on rhapsody - their next generation OS. I was under the assumption that rhapsody (and later darwin) was basically an OPENSTEP derivative with a brand new graphics layer. Its obvious to anybody who uses OS X currently, and who used to use OPENSTEP 4.2. In OS X, the app NetInfo is strikingly similar to the NetInfo app in NEXTSTEP/OPENSTEP. A ps -ax lists a whole bunch of processes that are also strikingly similar between the two. The there are things like WebObject which came from OPENSTEP 4.2, Objective-C framework which was present back in NEXTSTEP versions. I was under the impression that OS X was a derivative of OPENSTEP - which means from a kernel standpoint it is NOT BSD and NOT System V, rather it is a MACH kernel (which sort of is a BSD kernel derivative). Apple scraped the graphics layer and made their own. And this is where the BSD connection comes in, Apple scraped OPENSTEP's TCP/IP and opted to use the one from FreeBSD - which is the best! The problem is I hear things from people, and I read things from prominent sources, that completely make no sense. Things like: OS X is FreeBSD OS X is BSD Unix Apple uses the FreeBSD kernel And today I got a security email from WatchGuard (the crapy firewall people) with the statement: "With OS X, Apple changed the core of its operating system to a version of Unix known as BSD." Then colleges of mine read that, and they come to me and say, "Hey, did ya hear? Apple uses FreeBSD" Its driving me nuts, when are people going to get things straight? Or am I completely off base here?! -john
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