Comment by p_ing
19 hours ago
To certify any version of macOS as UNIX, the security had to be significantly altered (disabling SIP) among a few other things. This is why what is shipped is not what is certified as UNIX. You can /make/ it match what is certified as an administrator, but that would be inadvisable.
https://www.osnews.com/story/141633/apples-macos-unix-certif...
EDIT: And really, UNIX certification means nothing except to potentially government agencies and people who don't understand what UNIX and/or UNIX certification is. Or why being "certified UNIX" is generally meaningless: see the BSDs, which are much closer to "UNIX" origins than macOS will ever be.
Or Windows, which is frankly just has better architected internals and abandons legacy UNIX ;-)
> is. Or why being "certified UNIX" is generally meaningless: see the BSDs, which are much closer to "UNIX" origins than macOS will ever be
MacOS is BSD over Mach, which is itself derived from BSD.
Yes, that's the point. It's further removed from UNIX than the BSDs are.
macOS contains BSD userland, networking, file system, POSIX, and a couple of other things. But XNU, the kernel, is "X is Not UNIX", if there ever was a statement to be made about the underpinnings of macOS.
https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/Da...
You have just described OSF/1 (and later – Tru64) – a certified UNIX with a hybrid kernel operating over a Mach microkernel, BSD userland, POSIX conformance etc.
What is the point that you are making?
This is a very silly argument.
There were several actual Unixes released based on Mach, and some of them more purely Mach than macOS/NeXT ever have been.
The people that certify it say that you are wrong. What you think and what actually is are two entirely different things in this case. The fact remains that, according to the OpenGroup (and they are the one that matter here), macOS 26 is UNIX.
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> Or Windows, which is frankly just has better architected internals and abandons legacy UNIX ;-)
Current macOS user, and former NT kernel dabbler and VMS user here. That's highly debatable.
On the kernel side, Windows is still filled with legacy VMS-isms. Eg: Object Manager (object/resource model), named objects, handles, how processes and threads work, vmem, scheduling etc etc
On the userspace side, Windows is still filled with legacy DOS-isms.
Don't me wrong, I love the underlying Windows OS, despite its many quirks, but it's filled with perhaps even more legacy cruft and definitely isn't any sort of step above anything else.
I also don't believe anyone actually runs macOS in a UNIX-compliant configuration. Rather, it's a checkbox on some RFP and nobody is clued into why it's actually there, because all the people that did know have since retired.
What lineage of OS predates both DOS and VMS? :-)
As the popular phrase goes: "It's legacy, all the way down". What matters is what's left of those legacies in current revs.
In both cases: "Quite a bit", but I wish the base Windows OS would evolve away from legacy as much as macOS has. Start with eliminating drive letters.
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