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When I look at it, I basically see NeXTSTEP which is UNIX... I see a lot of OS X is BSD, or, OS X is Darwin + BSD, all I see is NeXTSTEP with a worse interface...


When I say OX is literally UNIX, the emphasis is on the word 'literally'. To be classified as a UNIX system, meaning that an OS maker can use the UNIX trademark, the system have to be certified by the The Open Group.

BSD was UNIX, yet neither of it's 2 prevalent derivatives (FreeBSD and OpenBSD) has applied for certification. They are classified as Unix-like; the same is true for any Linux distribution.

To some people, this may be semantics, but one of the reasons that drew me to OSX was the certification.


What appeals to you about the certification? Are there ways in which OS X behaves in a "more standard" way than FreeBSD ?


yes, I got the reference. I was talking about personal impressions, I was not clear about it though, sorry. I still remember when they (Apple) run an ad showing a powerbook running Mac OS X saying "Send other UNIX to /dev/null", how excited I was at the time :-P


Almost all of the userland command-line tools are from BSD. The most important exception is clang which is independent (though Apple has historically been the biggest contributor).

Also, large parts of the kernel are from BSD.




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