[DaiPlusPlus]

Yes, macOS is a BSD - UNIX Certification and POSIX compliance is nice, but macOS does not behave the same way as Linux, which famously is not a Unix (it's even in the name), and POSIX compliance doesn't mean much today: even Windows 2000 and Windows Server 2003 were POSIX compliant with SFU.

From what I gather from people with far more experience than me: if you need a "Linux-compliant" environment you're better-off with WSL2 than macOS.

[rufugee]

I'd argue you're better off with macOS + something like Parallels or, if you just need ubuntu, multipass. Introducing Windows to get a Linux-compliant environment is reaching around your back to scratch your elbow.

[linsomniac]

My use case for WSL is slightly different: I work with developers who run Windows and I'd like to be able to figure out workflows that will work on their systems. A coworker today was having issues with running a Docker container that apparently had something to do with how Docker was interacting with WSL, but I couldn't reproduce on my Linux or Mac systems.

[Aaron2222]

Lima[0] is also great if you just need command-line Linux.

[0]: https://github.com/lima-vm/lima

[rswail]

MacPorts makes your Apple a Unix box in userspace and has most of the apps and frameworks and languages.

WSL2 is just running a Linux in a VM. You can do that with VirtualBox and other hypervisors. You can also spin up a Kubernetes runtime that supports Apple's Hypervisor Framework.

[raverbashing]

> if you need a "Linux-compliant" environment

I'd willing to bet some pocket money that most people claiming that don't know what they're talking about

Unless you need, I dunno, DBUS? Or are specifically building stuff for Ubuntu/Red hat etc

[trissylegs]

I had a lot of trouble getting any FPGA software running on Mac. But Linux it just runs/builds out of the box.

Although if you have windows it also tends to run there too.

[raverbashing]

Ah true, some SW is built for specific Linux distros (on one side, it's hard to build an "universal binary" but on the other side, I've seen very ugly software installs)

[pjmlp]

Usually are the folks that equate Linux with UNIX, and complain about other UNIXes when they don't offer Linux specific syscalls.

[wil421]

How does Windows behave anywhere closer to Linux than MacOS? Why would I want my os to behave like Linux? M1/Arm compatibilities aside.