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by wpm 698 days ago
macOS shares zero lineage with Linux, which itself shares zero lineage with the UNIX derivatives. It would make zero sense for Apple to call macOS "Apple Linux" when it doesn't use the Linux kernel. Mac OS X is closest to a NeXTStep box with a coat of Mac-like polish on top. Even calling it "Apple Berkeley Unix" wouldn't make sense, because the XNU kernel is a mish mash of both BSD 4.3 and the Mach kernel.

Linux and the UNIX derivates are not even cousins. Not related. Not even the same species. They just both look like crabs a la https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carcinisation.
4 comments
jholman 698 days ago
I used to have a coworker, a senior dev of decades of experience, who insisted that MacOS was a real Linux, "just like BSD". Sigh.

Of course, this belief probably had no downsides or negative consequences, other than hurting my brain, which they probably did not regard as a significant problem.

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13of40 698 days ago
The crabs analogy isn't a good one, because they evolve independently to play well in a common environment. GNU/Linux is a rewrite of Unix that avoids the licensing and hardware baggage that kept Unix out of reach of non-enterprise users in the 80s and early 90s.
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frabbit 697 days ago
Your statement seems very strong. Is Mac OS X not based on Darwin? Are you defining "lineage" in some way to only mean licensing and exclude the shared ideas (a kernel manipulating files)? Thanks for the "carcinisation" link.
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frabbit 697 days ago
To be more precise: this simplified history suggests a shared "lineage" back to the original UNIXes of all of BSDs (and hence Darwin and OSX) and of the GNU/Linux and other OSes https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/3202

So, "zero shared lineage" seems like a very strong statement.

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Phiwise_ 698 days ago
>OS X is closest to a NeXTStep

This is already in the piece. Why waste time repeating it?

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dylan604 698 days ago
Because the person they replied to used a term like Apple Linux which is ridiculous. So somebody on the internet was wrong and needed to be corrected
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CRConrad 693 days ago
> somebody on the internet was wrong and needed to be corrected

https://xkcd.com/386/

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Phiwise_ 693 days ago
I used it, and on purpose. If you missed why, you should go back and read again before replying.
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