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Linux is quite different from macOS in many ways. They are both distantly inspired by "unix" (and Apple has managed to convince someone to let them use the trad
by School-Cotton 8mo ago
Linux is quite different from macOS in many ways. They are both distantly inspired by "unix" (and Apple has managed to convince someone to let them use the trademark, so they really "are" unix, legally at least), but the similarity ends there.
- alexjplant 8mo agoThey didn't convince anybody of anything. They poured an enormous amount of technical work [1] into making it compliant with the Single Unix Specification [2]. > The standard specifies programming interfaces for the C language, a command-line shell, and user commands. What else would be necessary to call it such? [1] https://www.quora.com/What-goes-into-making-an-OS-to-be-Unix-compliant-certified https://www.quora.com/What-goes-into-making-an-OS-to-be-Unix... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_UNIX_Specification#macOS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_UNIX_Specification#macO...
- School-Cotton 8mo ago> What else would be necessary to call it such? Unix was a specific piece of software from a specific era. The experience of using it was very much unlike macOS for most users. Making it a "specification" was a later ret-con. If someday Microsoft goes out of business and whoever acquires the trademarks makes a "Windows Specification", that you can meet and be legally considered Windows despite sharing zero code with the original, I would also think that was silly. At most it makes sense to say that macOS has a sufficient set of features to emulate Unix, not that it is actually Unix.