[Ti] (OT) OSX Linuxbaserad?

[b]

According to Lisbeth Zachs:

>I'm following an online course in basic knowledge of Firewall 
>handling. It covering mostly PC but Mac appeared with  a statement 
>that OSX was Linux based. When one of the fellow students questioned 
>that statement the tutor answered
><quote>
>Jaguar (OS X) version kernal is under the GNU public license, so 
>it's fair to say the kernal is Linux based. </quote>
>I assume he is right to the fact that that the kernal is under GNU 
>but does that justify the conclusion that it is Linux based? I have 
>simply thought it as UNIX-based and I don't care either way I'm just 
>a bit surprised and would like to know if you agree with the tutor 
>or not? Thank you for your insights.

I'm no expert. But Linux is an inaccurate description of the Unix 
base of the Mac system. The "Unix" angle is actually the core of the 
Mac OS, which is called Darwin. Darwin, in turn is a 'blend' of 
technologies, the main one being Mach 3.0 which is based on a Unix 
variant called 4.4BSD, and was an original Unix kernel, one of two, 
or more, that was, itself, developed at UC Berkeley, [hence the name 
Berkeley Software Development, or BSD].

Darwin is an OpenSource technology, meaning Apple is releasing all 
the parts of the source code that were modified by Apple, back into 
the OpenSource community. What we refer to as the 'kernel' is 
everything in Darwin, except the BSD component , the 'sub-system, 
which isn't even necessary in your installation unless you need 
Terminal, or access to the huge number of compiled apps that are in 
the world as Unix apps, and can all be compiled to run in OSX as if 
they were native to OSX. That's a 'blanket' statement that one of the 
'real' smart guys will rip into here, but it is basically accurate, 
with exceptions.

Linux was invented/written by Linus Torvalds, at the university of 
Finland, Helsinki, in 1991. It is based on a minor offshoot of Unix, 
called Minix, and was released as version 1.0 in 1994. It appears 
under the GNU General Public License, meaning that companies can seel 
it, or change it, but MUST release their source code, freely, back 
into the community.

So, no, your professor is off by about 6,000 miles.

~flipper